^^r•75 


Division 
Sectioa 


MESSAGES   FROM    THE    EPISTLE 
TO  THE  HEBREWS 


MESSAGES   FROM 

THE    EPISTLE    TO 

THE  HEBREWS 


"By  HANDLEY  C.  G.  MOULE,  D.D. 


BISHOP  OF  DURHAM 


i  1910      .1 


HODDER    AND    STOUGHTON 

NEW  YORK 

1909 


The  Bible  is  the  Sky  in  which 
God  has   set   Christ  the   Sun. 

John  Ker,  D.D. 


PREFACE 

fTlHE  following  chapters  are  the  work  of 
-L  intervals  of  leisure  scattered  over  a  long 
time.  The  exposition  had  advanced  some  way 
when  an  unexpected  call  to  new  and  exacting 
duties  compelled  me  to  put  it  aside  for  several 
years.  Accordingly  a  certain  difference  of  treat- 
ment in  the  later  chapters  as  compared  with 
the  earlier  will  probably  be  seen  by  the 
reader,  particularly  a  rather  fuller  detail  in  the 
exposition.  But  purpose  and  plan  are  essen- 
tially the  same  throughout. 

No  attempt  whatever  is  made,  here  or  in  the 
course  of  the  work,  to  deal  with  those  Hterary 
and  historical  problems  which  so  conspicuously 
attach  themselves  to  this  Epistle.  Who  the 
"  Hebrews  "  were  is  nowhere  discussed.  Nor  is 
any  positive  answer  offered  to  a  question  to 
which  assuredly  no  such  answer  can  be  given, 
the  question,  namely,  of  the  authorship.  In 
my  opinion,  in  face  of  all  that  I  have  read 
to   the  contrary,  it  still  seems  at  least  possible 


vi  PREFACE 

that  the  ultimate  human  author  was  St.  Paul. 
All,  or  very  nearly  all,  the  objections  to  his 
name  which  the  phenomena  of  the  Epistle 
primd  facie  present,  and  some  of  which  lie 
unquestionably  deep,  seem  to  be  capable  of 
a  provisional  answer  if  we  assume,  what  is 
80  conceivable,  that  the  Apostle  committed 
his  message  and  its  argument,  on  purpose, 
to  a  colleague  so  gifted,  mentally  and  by 
the  Spirit,  that  he  might  be  trusted  to 
cast  the  work  into  his  own  style.  The  well- 
known  remark  of  Origen  that  only  God  knows 
who  "  wrote "  the  Epistle  appears  to  me  to 
point  (if  we  look  at  its  context)  this  way. 
Origen  surely  means  by  the  "  writer "  what 
is  meant  in  Eom.  xvi.  22.  Only,  on  the 
hypothesis,  the  amanuensis  of  our  Epistle  was, 
for  a  special  purpose  presumably,  a  Christian 
prophet  in  his  own  right. 

In  any  case  the  author,  if  not  an  apostle, 
was  a  prophet.  And  he  carries  to  us  a  prophet's 
"  burthen  "  of  unspeakable  import,  and  in  words 
to  which  all  through  the  Christian  ages  the  soul 
has  responded  as  to  the  words  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 

HANDLEY  DUNELM. 
Easter,  1909. 


CONTENTS 


PAOB 

Consider  Him  •  •  •  .  .        i 

Heb.  i.-ii. 

II 

A  Heart  of  Faith  .....        8 

Heb.  iii. 

Ill 

Unto  Perfection      .  .  .  .  .14 

Heb.  iv.-vi. 

IV 

Our  Great  Melchizedek    .  .  .  .23 

Heb.  vii. 

V 

The  Better  Covenant        .  .  .  .32 

Heb.  viii. 

VI 

Sanctuary  and  Sacrifice  .  .  ,  .42 

Heb.  ix. 


viii  CONTENTS 

VII 

PAQK 

Full,  Perfect,  and  Sufficient     .  .  .51 

Heb.  X, 


61 


VIII 

Faith  and  its  Power 

Heb.  xi.  (I.). 

IX 

Faith  and  its  Annals 

Heb.  xi.  (II.). 

X 

Followers  of  them 

Heb.  xii.  1-14. 

XI 

Sinai  and  Sion 

, 

Heb,  xii.  14-28. 

71 


80 


90 


XII 

Appeals  and  Instructions  .  .  .    100 

Heb.  xiii.  1-14. 

XIII 

Last  Words  ......    110 

Heb.  xiii.  l.')-25. 


MESSAGES 


FROM    THE 


EPISTLE  TO  THE  HEBREWS 

CHAPTER   I 
CONSIDER  HIM 

Heb.  i.-ii. 

LET  us  open  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  with 
an  aim  simple  and  altogether  practical  for 
heart  and  for  life.  Let  us  take  it  just  as  it 
stands,  and  somewhat  as  a  whole.  We  will  not 
discuss  its  authorship,  interesting  and  extensive 
as  that  problem  is.  We  will  not  attempt, 
within  the  compass  of  a  few  short  chapters, 
to  expound  continuously  its  wonderful  text. 
Eather,  we  will  gather  up  from  it  some  of  its 
large  and  conspicuous  spiritual  messages,  taken 
as  messages  of  the  Word  of  God  "  which  liveth 
and  abideth  for  ever." 

No  part  of  Holy  Scripture  is  ever  really  out 


2  CONSIDER  HIM 

of  date.  But  it  is  true  meanwhile  that,  as  for 
persons  so  for  periods,  there  are  Scripture  books 
and  Scripture  truths  which  are  more  than 
ordinarily  timely.  It  is  not  that  others  are 
therefore  untimely,  nor  that  only  one  class  of 
book  or  one  aspect  of  truth  can  be  eminently 
timely  at  one  time.  But  it  seems  evident  that 
the  foreseeing  Architect  of  the  Bible  has  so 
adjusted  the  parts  of  His  wonderful  vehicle  of 
revelation  and  blessing  that  special  fitnesses 
continually  emerge  between  our  varying  times 
and  seasons  on  the  one  hand  and  the  multifold 
Word  on  the  other. 

The  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  is  in  some  re- 
markable respects  a  book  timely  for  our  day.  It 
invites  to  itself,  if  I  read  it  aright,  the  renewed 
attention  of  the  thoughtful  Christian,  and  not 
least  of  the  thoughtful  Christian  of  the  English 
Church,  as  it  brings  him  messages  singularly  in 
point  to  some  of  the  main  present  needs  of  his 
spiritual  life  and  its  surroundings.  It  was 
written  manifestly  in  the  first  instance  to  meet 
special  and  pressing  current  trials ;  it  bears  the 
impress  of  a  time  of  severe  sifting,  a  time  when 
foundations  were  challenged,  and  individual  faith 
put  to  even  agonizing  proofs,  and  the  community 
threatened  with  an  almost  dissolution.  Such  a 
writing  must  have  a  voice  articulate  and  sym- 
pathetic for  a  period  like  ours. 


THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST  3 

We  will  take  into  our  hands  then,  portion  by 
portion,  this  wonderful  "  open  letter,"  and  listen 
through  it  to  some  of  the  things  which  "  the 
Spirit  saith  "  to  the  saints  and  to  the  Church. 

We  now  contemplate  in  this  sense  the  first 
two  chapters.  We  put  quite  aside  a  host  of 
points  of  profound  interest  in  detail,  and  ask 
ourselves  only  what  is  the  broad  surface,  the  drift 
and  total,  of  the  message  here.  As  to  its  climax, 
it  is  Jesus  Christ,  our  "  merciful  and  faithful 
High  Priest"  (ii.  17).  As  to  the  steps  that 
lead  up  to  the  climax,  they  are  a  presentation  of 
the  personal  glory  of  Jesus  Christ,  as  God  the  Son 
of  God,  as  Man  the  Son  of  Man,  who  for  us  men 
and  our  salvation  came,  suffered,  and  prevailed. 

Who  that  reads  the  Bible  with  the  least  care 
has  not  often  noted  this  in  the  first  passages  of 
the  Hebrews,  and  could  not  at  once  so  state  the 
matter  ?  What  is  the  great  truth  of  Hebrews  i.  ? 
Jesus  Christ  is  God  (ver.  8) ;  the  Son  (ver.  2) ; 
absolutely  like  the  Father  (ver.  3) ;  Lord  of  the 
bright  Company  of  Heaven,  who  in  all  their 
ranks  and  orders  worship  Him  (ver.  6) ;  creative 
Originator  of  the  Universe  (ver.  10),  such  that 
the  starry  depths  of  space  are  but  the  folds  of 
His  vesture,  which  hereafter  He  shall  change  for 
another  (ver.  1 2) ;  Himself  eternal,  "  the  same," 
transcendent  above  all  time,  yet  all  the  while 
the   Son   begotten,  the   Son,  infinitely  adequate 


4  CONSIDER   HIM 

and  infinitely  willing  to  be  the  final  Vehicle  of 
the  Father's  voice  to  us  (verses  1,  5,  6).  What 
is  the  great  truth  of  Hebrews  ii.  ?  Jesus  Christ 
is  Man.  He  is  other  than  angelic,  for  He  is  God. 
But  also  He  is  other  than  angelic,  for  He  is  Man 
(verses  5,  6,  7).  He  is  the  Brother  of  Man  as 
truly  as  He  is  the  Son  of  God  (ver.  11).  He  has 
taken  share  with  us  in  flesh  and  blood  (ver.  14), 
that  is  to  say,  He  has  assumed  manhood  in  that 
state  or  stage  in  which  it  is  capable  of  death,  and 
He  has  done  this  on  purpose  (it  is  a  wonder- 
ful thought)  that  He  may  be  capable  of  dying. 
This  blessed  Jesus  Christ,  this  God  and  Man, 
our  Saviour,  was  bent  upon  dying,  and  that  for 
a  reason  altogether  connected  with  us  and  with 
His  will  to  save  us  (ver.  15).  We  were  im- 
measurably dear  and  important  to  Him.  And 
our  deliverance  demanded  His  identification  with 
us  in  nature,  and  His  temptations  (ver.  18),  and 
finally  His  mysterious  suffering.  So  He  came. 
He  suffered,  He  was  "  perfected  " — in  respect  of 
capacity  to  be  our  Eedeemer — "  through  suffer- 
ings "  (ver.  10).  And  now,  incarnate,  slain,  and 
risen  again,  He,  still  our  Brother,  is  "  crowned 
with  glory  and  honour"  (ver.  9),  He  is  our 
Leader  (ver.  10).  He  is  our  High  Priest, 
merciful  and  faithful  (ver.  17). 

Thus   the  Epistle,   on   its   way   to   recall   its 
readers,  at  a  crisis  of  confusion  and  temptation, 


CHRIST  FIRST  5 

to  certainty,  patience,  and  peace,  leads  them — 
not  last  but  first — to  Jesus  Christ.  It  unfolds 
at  once  to  them  His  glories  of  Person,  His 
wonder  of  Work  and  Love.  It  does  not  elabo- 
rately travel  up  to  Him  through  general  con- 
siderations. It  sets  out  from  Him.  It  makes 
Him  the  base  and  reason  for  all  it  has  to  say — 
and  it  has  to  say  many  things.  Its  first  theme 
is  not  the  Community,  but  the  Lord  ;  not  Church 
principles,  not  that  great  duty  of  cohesion  about 
which  it  will  speak,  and  speak  urgently,  further 
on,  but  the  Lord,  in  His  adorable  personal 
greatness,  in  His  unique  and  all-wonderful 
personal  achievement.  To  that  attitude  of 
thought  it  recurs  again  and  again  in  its  later 
stages.  In  one  way  or  another  it  is  always 
bidding  us  look  up  from  even  the  greatest 
related  subjects  and  "  consider  Him." 

Am  I  not  right  in  saying  that  here  is  a 
message  straight  to  the  restless  heart  of  our 
time,  and  not  least  to  the  special  conditions  of 
Christian  life  just  now  in  our  well-beloved 
Church  ?  We  must,  of  course  we  must,  think 
about  a  hundred  problems  presented  by  the 
circumference  of  the  life  of  the  Christian  and 
the  life  of  the  Church.  At  all  times  such 
problems,  asking  for  attention  and  solution, 
emerge  to  every  thoughtful  disciple's  sight.  In 
our  own  time  they  seem  to  multiply  upon  one 


6  CONSIDER  HIM 

another  with  an  importunate  demand — problems 
doctrinal,  ritual,  governmental,  social ;  the  strife 
of  principles  and  tendencies  within  the  Church-; 
all  that  is  involved  in  the  relations  between 
the  Church  and  the  State,  and  again  between  the 
Church  and  the  world,  that  is  to  say,  human 
life  in  different  or  opposed  to  the  living  Christian 
creed  and  the  spiritual  Christian  rule. 

Well,  for  these  very  reasons  let  us  make  here 
first  this  brief  appeal,  prompted  by  the  opening 
paragraphs  of  the  great  Epistle.  If  you  would 
deal  aright  with  the  circumference,  earnest 
Christian  of  the  English  Church,  live  at  the 
Centre.  "  Dwell  deep."  From  the  Church 
come  back  evermore  to  Jesus  Christ,  that  from 
Jesus  Christ  you  may  the  better  go  back  to  the 
Church,  bearing  the  peace  and  the  power  of  the 
Lord  Himself  upon  you. 

There  is  nothing  that  can  serve  as  a  substitute 
for  this.  The  "  consideration "  of  our  blessed 
Eedeemer  and  King  is  not  merely  good  for  us ; 
it  is  vital.  To  "  behold  His  glory,"  deliberately, 
with  worship,  with  worshipping  love,  and  seen 
hy  direct  attention  to  the  mirror  of  His  Word, 
can  and  must  secure  for  us  blessings  which  we 
shall  otherwise  infallibly  lose.  This,  and  this 
alone,  amidst  the  strife  of  tongues  and  all  the 
perplexities  of  life,  can  develope  in  us  at  once 
the  humblest  reverence  and  the  noblest  liberty, 


A  VITAL  NEED  7 

convictions  firm  to  resist  a  whole  world  in 
opposition,  yet  the  meekness  and  the  fear  which 
utterly  exclude  injustice,  untruth,  hardness,  or 
the  bitter  word.  For  us  if  for  any,  for  us  now 
if  ever,  this  first  great  message  of  the  Epistle 
meets  a  vital  need  ;  "  Consider  Him." 


CHAPTER    II 
A   HEART   OF   FAITH 

Heb.  iii. 

"ITyE  have  just  endeavoured  to  find  a  message, 
*  »  "  godly  and  wholesome,  and  necessary  for 
these  times,"  in  the  opening  paragraphs  in  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews.  We  come  now  to 
interrogate  our  oracle  again,  and  we  open  the 
third  chapter  as  we  do  so. 

Here  again  we  find  the  Epistle  full,  first,  of 
"  Jesus  Christ  Himself."  He  is  "  the  Apostle 
and  the  High  Priest  of  our  profession"  (ver.  1), 
or  let  us  read  rather,  "  our  confession,"  the 
"  confession  "  of  us  who  are  loyal  to  His  Name 
as  His  disciples.  We  are  expressly  called  here 
to  do  what  the  first  two  chapters  implied  that 
we  must  do — to  "  consider  Him  "  (ver.  1),  to 
bend  upon  His  Person,  character,  and  work  the 
attention  of  the  whole  heart  and  mind.  We  are 
pointed  to  His  holy  fidelity  to  His  mission  (ver.  2) 
in  words  which  equally  remind  us  of  His  sub- 
ordination   to    the    Father's    will    and    of    His 


THE  SON  9 

absolute  authority  as  the  Father's  perfect  Re- 
presentative. We  are  reminded  (ver.  3)  of  that 
magnificent  other  side  of  His  position,  that  He  acts 
and  administers  in  "  the  house  of  God  "  not  as  a 
servant  but  as  the  Father's  "  own  Son  (ver.  6)  that 
serveth  Him."  Nay,  such  is  He  that  the  "  house  " 
in  which  He  does  His  filial  service  is  a  building 
which  He  Himself  has  reared  (ver.  3) ;  He  is 
its  Architect  and  its  Constructor  in  a  sense  in 
which  none  could  be  who  is  not  Divine.  Yes, 
He  is  no  less  than  God  (ver.  4) ;  God  Filial,  God 
so  conditioned  that  He  is  also  the  faithful  Sent- 
One  of  the  Father,  but  none  the  less  God.  We 
saw  Him  already  in  the  first  chapter  (ver.  10), 
placed  before  us  in  His  majesty  as  the  Originator 
of  the  material  Universe,  to  whom  the  starry 
skies  are  but  His  robe,  to  be  put  on  and  put  off 
in  season.  Here  He  is  the  doer  of  a  yet  more 
wonderful  achievement ;  He  is  the  Builder  of 
the  Church  of  the  Faithful,  For  the  "  house " 
which  He  thus  built  is  nothing  else  than  "  we  " 
(ver.  6),  we  who  by  faith  have  entered  into  the 
structure  of  the  "  living  stones  "  (see  1  Pet.  ii.  5), 
and  who,  by  "  the  confidence  and  the  rejoicing  of 
our  hope,"  abide  within  it. 

Thus  the  blessed  Lord  is  before  us  here  again, 
filling  our  sphere  of  thought  and  contemplation. 
It  is  here  just  as  it  is  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
Colossiaus.     There,  as  here,  errors  and  confusions 


lo  A  HEART  OF  FAITH 

in  the  Church  are  in  view — a  subtle  theosophy 
and  also  a  retrograde  ceremonialism,  probably 
both  amalgamating  into  one  dangerous  total. 
And  St.  Paul's  method  of  defence  for  his  con- 
verts there — what  is  it  ?  Above  all,  it  is  the 
presentation  of  Jesus  Christ,  in  the  glories  of 
His  Person  and  His  Work.  He  places  Him  in 
the  very  front  of  thought,  first  as  the  Head, 
Founder,  and  Corner-stone  of  the  Universe ; 
then  as  the  Head,  Eedeemer,  and  Life  of  the 
Church.  With  Him  so  seen  he  meets  the 
dreamy  thinker  and  the  ceremonial  devotee ; 
Christ  is  the  ultimate  and  only  repose,  alike 
for  thought  and  for  the  soul. 

In  this  Epistle  as  in  that  we  have  the  same 
phenomenon,  deeply  suggestive  and  seasonable 
for  our  life  to-day.  In  both  cases,  not  only  for 
individuals  but  for  the  Church,  there  was  mental 
and  spiritual  trouble.  Alike  in  Phrygian  Colossi 
and  wherever  the  "  Hebrews  "  lived  there  was  an 
invasion  of  church  difficulties  and  confusion.  A 
certain  affinity  in  detail  links  the  two  cases 
together.  Colossian  Christians  and  Hebrew 
Christians,  under  widely  different  circumstances, 
and  no  doubt  in  very  different  tones,  persuasive 
in  one  case,  threatening  in  the  other,  were  pressed 
to  retrograde  from  the  sublime  simplicity  and 
fulness  of  the  truth.  Their  danger  was  what 
I   may  venture   to   call  a  certain    medievalism. 


RETROGRESSION  ii 

Not  Mosaism,  not  Propbetism,  but  Judaism,  the 
successor  and  distortion  of  the  ancient  revela- 
tions, invited  or  commanded  their  adhesion,  or, 
in  the  case  of  the  "  Hebrews,"  their  return,  as  to 
the  one  true  faith  and  fold.  There  were  great 
differences  in  detail.  At  Colossae  it  does  not 
seem  that  the  "  medievalists  "  professed  to  deny 
Christianity ;  rather  they  professed  to  teach  the 
Judaistic  version  of  it  as  the  authentic  type. 
Among  the  "  Hebrews "  anti-Christianity  was 
using  every  effort  to  allure  or  to  alarm  the 
disciples  back  to  open  Eabbinism,  "  doing  de- 
spite to  the  Son  of  God."  But  both  streams 
of  tendency  went  in  the  same  general  direction 
so  far  that  they  put  into  the  utmost  prominence 
aspects  of  religion  full  of  a  traditional  cere- 
monialism, and  of  the  idea  of  human  meritorious 
achievement  rather  than  of  a  spiritual  reliance 
for  the  salvation  of  the  soul. 

Deeply  significant  it  is  that  in  both  cases  we 
have  the  danger  met  thus — by  the  presentation 
of  the  Incarnate  Redeemer  Himself,  in  His  per- 
sonal and  official  glory,  to  the  most  immediate 
possible  view  of  every  disciple,  "nothing  between." 
The  Epistles,  both  of  them,  have  much  to  say  on 
deep  general  principles.  But  all  this  they  say 
in  vital  connexion  with  Jesus  Christ ;  and  about 
Him  they  say  most  of  all.  He  is  the  supreme 
Antidote.     He,  "  considered,"  considered  fully,  is 


12  A   HEART  OF  FAITH 

not  so  much  the  clue  out  of  the  labyrinth  as  the 
great  point  of  view  from  which  the  mind  and  the 
soul  can  look  down  upon  it  and  see  how  tortuous, 
and  also  how  limited,  it  is. 

But  the  message  of  our  chapter  has  not  yet 
been  fully  heard.  It  has  spoken  to  us  of  Christ 
Jesus,  and  of  the  "  consideration "  of  Him  to 
which  we  are  called.  At  its  close  it  speaks  to 
us  of  faith  :  "  Take  heed,  lest  there  be  in  any  of 
you  an  evil  heart  of  unbelief,  in  departing  from 
the  living  God"  (ver.  12).  "To  whom  sware 
He  that  they  should  not  enter  into  His  rest, 
but  to  them  that  believed  not  ?  So  we  see  that 
they  could  not  enter  in  because  of  unbelief " 
(verses  18,  19). 

That  is  to  say,  our  "  consideration  "  of  Jesus 
Christ  must  not  be  all  our  action  towards  Him, 
if  we  would  be  sure,  and  safe,  and  strong.  It 
must  be  but  the  preliminary  to  a  "  heart  of 
faith."  That  is  to  say  again,  we  must  personally 
and  practically  take  Him  at  His  word,  and  rely 
upon  Him,  committing  our  souls  and  our  all  to 
Him,  to  Him  directly,  to  Him  solely.  We  must, 
in  the  exercise  of  this  reliance,  use  Him  ever- 
more as  our  Prophet,  Priest,  and  King.  We 
must  venture  upon  His  promises,  just  as  Israel 
ought  to  have  ventured  upon  the  promises  of 
Him  who  had  redeemed  them,  although  He 
tried    their    will    and    power    to    do    so  by  the 


THE  POWER  OF  FAITH  13 

terrors  of  the  wilderness  and  by  the  giants  of 
Canaan. 

Thus  to  rely  is  faith ;  for  faith  is  personal 
confidence  in  the  Lord  in  His  promise.  And 
such  faith  is  not  only,  as  it  is,  the  empty  hand 
which  receives  Divine  blessings  in  detail.  It  is 
the  empty  arms  which  clasp  always  that  com- 
prehensive blessing,  the  presence  of  "  the  living 
God "  in  Christ,  so  making  sure  of  a  secret  of 
peace,  of  rest,  of  decision,  of  strength,  of  deep- 
sighted  and  tranquil  thought  upon  "  things  which 
differ,"  which  is  of  infinite  importance  at  a  time 
of  confusion  and  debate  in  the  Christian  Church. 

Therefore,  alike  for  our  safety  and  for  our 
usefulness,  let  us  first  afresh  "consider  Him." 
And  then  let  us  afresh  "  take  heed  "  that  with 
"  a  good  heart  of  faith  "  we  draw  to  and  abide 
in  union  with  the  "  considered  "  Christ,  in  whom 
we  know  and  possess  the  living  God. 


CHAPTER   III 
UNTO   PERFECTION 

Hee.  iv.-vi. 

OUR  study  of  the  great  Epistle  takes  here 
another  step,  covering  three  short  but 
pregnant  chapters.  So  pregnant  are  they  that 
it  would  be  altogether  vain  to  attempt  to  deal 
with  them  thus  briefly  were  we  not  mindful  of 
our  special  point  of  view.  We  are  pondering 
the  Epistle  not  for  all  that  it  has  to  say,  but 
for  what  it  has  to  say  of  special  moment  and 
application  for  certain  needs  of  our  own  time. 

The  outline  of  the  portion  before  us  must 
accordingly  be  traced.  In  detail  it  presents 
many  questions  of  connexion  and  argument, 
for,  particularly  in  chapter  iv.,  the  apostolic 
thought  takes  occasionally  a  parenthetical  flight 
of  large  circuit.  But  in  outline  the  progression 
may  be  traced  without  serious  difficulty. 

We  have  first  the  appeal  to  exercise  the 
promptitude  and  decision  of  faith,  in  view  of 
the  magnificent  promise  of  a  Canaan  of  sacred 


THE  WORD  15 

rest  made  to  the  true  Israel  in  Christ.  Even 
to  "  seem "  (iv.  1 )  to  fail  of  this,  even  to  seem 
to  sink  into  a  desert  grave  of  unbelief  while 
"  the  rest  of  faith  "  is  waiting  to  be  entered,  is 
a  thought  to  "  fear,"  Great  indeed  are  the 
promises  ;  "  living  "  and  "  energetic  "  is  "  the 
Word  "  which  conveys  them.* 

That  "  Word "  is  piercing  as  a  sword  in  its 
convictions,  for  it  is  the  vehicle  of  His  mind 
and  His  holiness  "  with  whom  is  concerned  our 
discourse"  (iv.  13);  while  yet  it  is,  on  its  other 
side,  a  "  Gospel "  indeed  (iv.  2),  the  message  of 
supreme  good,  if  only  it  is  met  with  faith  by 
the  convicted  soul.  Yes,  it  is  a  message  which 
tells  of  a  land  of  "  rest,"  near  and  open,  fairer 
far  than  the  Canaan  on  which  Caleb  reported 
and  from  which  he  and  his  fellows  brought  the 
great  clusters  of  its  golden  vines.  Passage  after 
passage  of  the  old  Scriptures  (iv.  3-9)  shows 
that  that  Canaan  was  no  finality,  no  true  ter- 
minus of  the  purpose  of  God ;  another  "  rest," 
another  "  day "  of  entrance  and  blessing,  was 
intimated  all  along.  Unbelief  forfeited  the  true 
fruition  of  even  the  old  Canaan  for  the  old 
Israel.  And  now  out  of  that  evil  has  sprung 
the  glorious  good  of  a  more  articulate  promise 
of   the  new  Canaan,  the  inheritance  of  rest  in 

*  Ch.  iv.  12,  if  I  am  right,  follows  in  thought  upon  iv.  2, 
leaving  a  long  and  deep  parenthesis  between. 


l6  UNTO   PERFECTION 

Christ,  destined  for  the  new  Israel.  But  as 
then,  so  now,  the  promise,  if  it  is  to  come  to  its 
effect,  must  be  met  and  realized  by  obedient  faith. 
Despite  all  the  difficulties,  in  face  of  what- 
ever may  seem  the  Anakim  of  to-day,  lookmg  to 
Him  who  is  immeasurably  more  than  Moses,  and 
who  is  the  true  and  second  Joshua,*  we  must 
make  haste  to  enter  in  by  the  way  of  faith. 
We  must  "  mingle  the  word  with  faith  "  (iv.  2), 
into  one  glorious  issue  of  attained  and  abiding 
rest.  We  must  lay  our  hearts  soft  and  open 
(iv.  7)  before  the  will  of  the  Promiser.  We 
must  "be  in  earnest"  to  enter  in  (iv.  11). 

Then,  at  iv.  14,  the  appeal  takes  us  in 
beautiful  order  more  directly  to  Him  who  is 
at  once  the  Leader  and  the  Promised  Land. 
And  again  He  stands  before  us  as  a  "  great  High 
Priest."  Our  Moses,  our  Joshua,  is  also  our 
more  than  Aaron,  combining  in  Himself  every 
possible  qualification  to  be  our  guide  and  pre- 
server as  we  enter  in.  He  stands  before  us 
in  all  the  alluring  and  endearing  character  of 
mingled  majesty  and  mercy ;  a  High  Priest,  a 
great  High  Priest,  immeasurably  great ;  He  has 
"passed  through  the  heavens"  (iv.  14)  to  the 
Holiest,  to  the  throne,  the  celestial  mercy-seat 
(iv.  16)  "within  the  veil"  (vi.  19);  He  is  the 
Son  (v.  5) ;  He  is  the  Priest-King,  the  true 
*  The  "Jesus"  (iv.  8)  of  the  Authorized  Version. 


THE  GREAT   HIGH   PRIEST        17 

Melchizedek ;  He  is  all  this  for  ever  (vi.  20). 
But  on  the  other  hand  He  is  the  sinner's 
Friend,  who  has  so  identified  Himself  in  His 
blessed  Manhood  with  the  sinner,  veritably 
taking  our  veritable  nature,  that  He  is  "  able 
to  feel  with  our  weaknesses"  (iv.  15);  "able 
to  feel  a  sympathetic  tolerance  (fieTpioTradetp) 
towards  the  ignorant  and  the  wandering  "  (v.  2) ; 
understanding  well  "  what  sore  temptations  mean, 
for  He  has  felt  the  same  "  ;  yea,  He  has  known 
what  it  is  to  "  cry  out  mightily  and  shed  tears  " 
(v.  7)  in  face  of  a  horror  of  death ;  to  cast  Him- 
self as  a  genuine  suppliant,  in  uttermost  suffering, 
upon  paternal  kindness ;  to  get  to  know  by 
personal  experience  what  submission  means 
{efiaOe  ttjv  v'rraKorjv,  v.  8) ;  "  not  my  will 
but  Thine  be  done." 

Such  is  the  "  Leader  of  our  faith,"  so  great,  so 
glorious,  so  perfect,  so  tender,  so  deep  in  fellow- 
ship with  us.  Shall  we  not  follow  Him  into 
"  the  rest,"  though  a  "  Jordan  rolls  between " 
and  though  cities  of  giants  seem  to  frown  upon 
us  even  on  the  other  side  ?  Shall  we  not  dare 
thither  to  follow  Him  out  of  the  desert  of  our 
"  own  works  "  ? 

Much,  says  the  Epistle  (v.  11,  etc.),  is  to  be 
said  about  Him ;  the  theme  is  deep,  it  is  in- 
exhaustible, for  He  is  God  and  Man,  one  Christ. 
And   the  Hebrew  believers  (and  is  it   not   the 


i8  UNTO  PERFECTION 

same  with  us  ?)  are  not  quick  to  learn  the  great 
lesson  of   His  glory,  and   so   to  grow  into   the 
adult  manhood  of  grace.     But  let  us  try  ;  let  us 
address  ourselves  to  "  bear  onwards  (<f>epu>/j,€da) 
to  perfection  "  (vi.  1),  in  our  thought,  our  faith, 
and  so  in  our  experience.     The  great  foundation 
factors  must  be  for  ever  there,  the  initial  acts 
or  attitudes  of  repentance,  and  of  "  faith  towards 
God " ;   the  abandonment  of  the  service  of  sin, 
including   the  bondage  of  a  would-be  salvation 
of  self  by  self,  and  the  simple  turning  God-ward 
of  a  soul  which  has  come  to  despair  of  its  own 
resources — truths  symboHzed  and  sealed  by  the 
primal  rites  of  baptism  and  blessing  (vi.  2) ;  and 
then  the  great  revealed  facts  in  prospect,  resur- 
rection and  judgment,  must  be  always  remem- 
bered and  reckoned  with.     These  however  must 
be  "left"  (vi.  1),  not  in  oblivion  but  in  progress, 
just   as  a    building   "  leaves "    the    level    of    its 
always   necessary  foundation.     We   must  "  bear 
onwards"  and   upwards,  into   the  upper  air   of 
the   fulness   of   the   truth   of   the   glory  of   our 
Christ.      We  must  seek  "perfection,"  the  pro- 
found maturity  of  the  Christian,  by  a  maturer 
and  yet  maturer  insight  into   Him.      Awful   is 
the    spiritual    risk    of    any   other    course.     The 
soul    content    to    stand    still    is    in    peril    of   a 
tremendous   fall.     To  know  about   salvation  at 
all,  and  not  to  seek  to  develope  the  knowledge 


NEED  AND  LAW  OF  GROWTH      19 

towards  "  perfection,"  is  to  expose  one's  self 
to  the  terrible  possibility  of  the  fate  reserved 
for  those  who  have  much  light  but  no  love 
(vi.  4-9).*  But  this,  by  the  grace  of  God,  shall 
not  be  for  the  readers  of  the  Epistle.  They 
have  shewn  living  proofs  of  love  already, 
practical  and  precious,  for  the  blessed  Name's 
sake  (vi.  10).  Only,  let  them  remember  the 
spiritual  law — the  necessity  of  growth,  of  pro- 
gress, of  "  bearing  onwards  to  perfection  " ;  the 
tremendous  risks  of  a  subtle  stagnation ;  the 
looking  back  ;  the  pillar  of  salt. 

In  order  that  full  blessing  may  thus  be  theirs, 
let  them  look  for  it  in  the  only  possible  direction. 
Let  them  take  again  to  their  souls  the  mighty 
promise  of  eternal  benediction  (vi.  14),  sealed 
and  crowned  with  the  Promiser's  gracious  oath 
in  His  own  Name,  binding  Himself  to  fidelity 
under  the  bond  of  His  own  majesty  (vi.  13). 
Aye,  and  then  let  them  again  "  consider "  Him 
in  whom  promise  and  oath  are  embodied  and 
vivified  for  ever ;  in  whom  rests — nay,  in  whom 
consists — our  anchor  of  an  eternal  hope  (vi.  19); 
Jesus,  our  Man  of  men,  our  High  Priest  of  the 
everlasting  order,  now  entered  "  within  the  veil," 

*  I  make  no  attempt  here  to  expound  in  detail  the  fonnidable 
words  of  vi.  4-8.  But  I  believe  that  their  purport  is  fairly 
described  in  the  sentence  above  in  the  text.  Their  tnie  scrip- 
tural illustrations  are  to  be  sought  in  a  Balaam  and  a  Judas. 


20  UNTO   PERFECTION 

into  the  place  of  the  covenant  and  the  glory,  and 
"as  Forerunner  on  our  behalf"  (vi.  20).  To 
follow  Him  in  there,  in  the  "  consideration "  of 
faith  and  of  worshipping  love — this  is  the  secret, 
to  the  end,  for  "  bearing  onwards  to  perfection." 

Our  review  of  the  passage  is  thus  in  some  sort 
over.  Confessedly  it  is  an  outline ;  but  I  do  not 
think  that  any  vital  element  in  the  matter  has 
been  overlooked.  Much  of  the  message  we  are 
seeking  has  been  inevitably  given  us  by  the 
way ;  we  may  be  content  now  to  gather  up  and 
summarize  the  main  result. 

The  "Hebrews,"  then,  and  their  special 
circumstances  of  difficulty,  are  here  in  view, 
as  everywhere  else  in  the  Epistle.  Tempted  to 
"  fall  away,"  to  give  up  the  "  hope  set  before 
them,"  to  relapse  to  legalism,  to  bondage,  to  the 
desert,  to  a  famine  of  the  soul,  to  barrenness  and 
death — here  they  are  dealt  with,  in  order  to 
the  more  than  prevention  of  the  evil.  And 
here,  as  ever,  the  remedy  propounded  is  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  in  His  personal  glory,  in  His 
majestic  offices,  in  His  unfathomable  human 
sympathy,  seen  in  perfect  harmony  of  hght  with 
His  eternal  greatness. 

The  remedy  is  Christ ;  a  deeper,  fuller,  always 
maturing  sight  of  Christ.  The  urgent  necessity 
is  first  promptitude  and  then  progress  in  respect 
of  knowing  Him. 


SOME  PRESENT  TENDENCIES      21 

At  the  risk  of  a  charge  of  iteration  and 
monotony,  I  reaffirm  that  here  is  the  great 
antidote  for  the  many  kindred  difficulties  of  our 
troubled  time.  From  how  many  sides  comes  the 
strain !  Sometimes  from  that  of  an  open 
naturalism ;  sometimes  from  that  of  a  partial 
yet  far-reaching  "  naturalism  under  a  veil " 
which  some  recent  teachings  on  "  The  Being  of 
Christianity  "  may  exemplify,  with  principles  and 
presuppositions  which  largely  underlie  the 
extremer  forms,  certainly,  of  the  modem  critique 
of  Scripture ;  sometimes  from  the  opposite 
quarter  of  an  ecclesiasticism  which  more  or  less 
exaggerates  or  distorts  the  great  ideas  of 
corporate  life  and  sacramental  operation.  It 
would  be  idle  to  ignore  the  subtle  nuances  of 
difference  between  mind  and  mind,  and  the 
resultant  varying  incidence  in  detail  of  great 
and  many-sided  truths.  But  is  it  not  fair  and 
true  to  say  that,  on  the  whole,  the  supreme 
personal  glory  of  Christ,  as  presented  direct  to 
the  human  soul  in  its  august  and  ineffable 
loveliness,  in  its  infinite  lovableness,  is  what 
alike  the  naturalistic  and  the  ultra-ecclesiastic 
theories  of  religion  tend  to  becloud  ?  On  the 
other  side,  accordingly,  it  is  in  the  "  considera- 
tion "  of  that  glory,  in  acquaintance  with 
that  wonderful  Christ,  that  we  shall  find  the 
glow  which  can  melt  and  overcome  the  cloud. 


22  UNTO  PERFECTION 

We  must  put  ourselves  continually  in  face  of  the 
revelation  of  this  in  tlie  Word  of  God.  We  must 
let  that  revelation  so  sink  into  the  heart  as  to 
do  its  self-verifying  work  there  thoroughly,  yet 
with  a  growtli  never  to  be  exhausted.  We  must 
"  bear  onwards  "  evermore  "  unto  perfection  " — in 
"  knowing  Him."  So  we  shall  stand,  and  live, 
and  love,  and  labour  on. 


CHAPTER  IV 
OUR  GREAT  MELCHIZEDEK 

Hee.  vii. 

THERE  is  a  symmetrical  dignity  all  its  own 
in  the  seventh  chapter  of  the  Hebrews.  I 
recollect  listening,  now  many  years  ago,  to  a 
characteristic  exposition  of  it  by  the  late  beloved 
and  venerated  Edward  Hoare,  in  a  well-known 
drawing-room  at  Cromer — a  "  Bible  Reading  " 
full  alike  of  mental  stimulus  and  spiritual  force. 
He  remarked,  among  many  other  things,  that 
the  chapter  might  be  described  as  a  sermon, 
divided  under  three  headings,  on  the  text  of 
Psalm  ex.  4.  This  division  and  its  significance 
he  proceeded  to  develope.  The  chapter  opens 
with  a  preamble,  a  statement  of  the  unique 
phenomena  which  surround,  in  the  narrative  of 
Genesis,  the  name  and  person  of  Melchizedek. 
Then,  starting  from  the  presupposition,  to  whose 
truth  the  Lord  Himself  is  so  abundantly  a 
witness,  that  the  Old  Testament  is  alive  every- 
where with  intimations  of  the  Christ,  and 
23 


24      OUR  GREAT  MELCHIZEDEK 

remembering  that  in  the  Psalm  in  question  a 
mysterious  import  is  explicitly  assigned  to 
Melchizedek,  the  Writer  proceeds  to  his 
discourse.  Its  theme  is  the  primacy  of  the 
priesthood  embodied  in  Melchizedek  over  that 
represented  by  Aaron,  and  the  bearing  of  this  on 
the  glory  of  Him  who  is  proclaimed  a  priest  for 
ever  after  Melchizedek's  order.  This  theme  is  pre- 
sented under  headings,  somewhat  as  follows.  First 
(verses  4—14),  the  one  priesthood  is  greater  than 
the  other  in  order.  Abraham,  bearing  the  whole 
Aaronic  hierarchy  potentially  within  him,  defers 
to  Melchizedek  as  to  his  greater.  Hence,  among 
other  inferences,  the  sacred  Personage  who  is  a 
priest  for  ever  after  Melchizedek's  order,  wholly 
independent  of  Levitical  limits,  must  dominate 
and  must  supersede  the  order  of  the  sons  of  Aaron 
with  their  inferior  status  and  with  their  transitory 
lives.  Secondly  (verses  15—19),  the  one  priest- 
hood is  greater  than  the  other  in  respect  of  the 
finality,  the  permanence,  the  everlastingness,  of 
the  greater  Priest  and  of  His  office.  He  is  what 
He  is  "  for  ever,  on  the  scale  of  the  power  of 
indissoluble  life."  *  As  such.  He  is  the  Priest 
not  of  an  introductory  and  transient  "  command- 
ment "  but  of  that  "  better  hope  "  which  (ver.  19) 
has  at  last  "  made  perfect "  the  purpose  and  the 
promise,  fulfilled  the  intention  of  eternal  mercy, 

*  AcarA  duya/xtv  fw^s  dKaToKvTov, 


AN   INSPIRED  SERMON  25 

and  brouglit  11s,  the  people  of  this  great  covenant, 
absolutely  nigh  to  God.  Thirdly  (verses  20,  21), 
this  second  aspect  of  the  supremacy  of  the 
greater  Priesthood  is  emphasized  and  solemnized 
by  one  further  reference  to  Psalm  ex.  4.  There 
the  Eternal,  looking  upon  the  mysterious  Partner 
of  His  throne,  is  heard  not  to  promise  only  but 
to  vow,  with  an  oath  unalterable  as  Himself,  that 
the  Priesthood  of  "  His  Fellow "  shall  be  ever- 
lasting. No  such  solemnity  of  affirmation 
attended  Aaron's  investiture.  There  is  something 
greater  here,  and  more  immediately  Divine.  The 
"  covenant "  (ver.  22)  committed  to  the  admini- 
stration of  One  thus  sealed  with  the  oath  of 
Heaven  must  indeed  be  "  better,"  and  cannot  but 
be  final ;  the  goal  of  the  eternal  purpose. 

Then  (verses  23-28)  the  discourse  passes  into 
what  we  may  call  its  epilogue.  The  thought 
recurs  to  the  sublime  contrast  between  the 
pathetic  numerousness  of  the  successors  of  Aaron, 
"  not  suffered  to  continue  by  reason  of  death,"  and 
the  singleness,  the  "  unsuccessional "  identity  for 
ever,  of  the  true  Melchizedek,  who  abides  eter- 
nally. And  then,  moving  to  its  end,  the  argu- 
ment glows  and  brightens  into  an  "  application  " 
to  the  human  heart.  We  have  in  Jesus  (the 
Name  has  now  already  been  pronounced,  ver.  22) 
a  Friend,  an  Intercessor,  infinitely  and  for  ever 
competent    to    save    us,   His    true   Israel.     We 


26      OUR  GREAT  MELCHIZEDEK 

have  in  Him  a  High  Priest  supreme  in  every 
attribute  of  holiness  and  power,  and  qualified 
for  His  work  of  intercession  by  that  sacrifice 
of  Himself  which  is  at  once  solitary  and  all- 
sufficient.  Behold  then  the  contrast  and  the 
conclusion.  To  a  great  Dispensation,  the  pre- 
paratory, succeeds  a  greater,  the  greatest,  the 
other's  end  and  crown.  To  the  "  weak  "  mortal 
priesthood  of  the  law,  never  warranted  by  the 
vow  of  God  to  abide  always  in  possession, 
succeeds  One  who  is  Priest,  and  King,  and  Son, 
sealed  for  His  office  by  the  irrevocable  vow, 
"  consecrated  for  evermore," 

Such  on  the  whole,  as  I  recall  it,  was  the 
exposition  of  my  venerable  friend,  in  1887. 
Each  new  reading  of  the  chapter  seems  to  me 
to  bear  out  the  substantial  accuracy  of  it ; 
indeed  the  symmetry  and  order  of  the  chapter 
make  it  almost  inevitable  that  some  such  line 
should  be  taken  by  the  explanation.  Thus  then 
it  lies  before  us.  It  is  filled  in  all  its  parts 
with  Jesus  Christ,  in  His  character  of  the  true 
Melchizedek,  our  final,  everlasting,  perfect, 
supreme,  Divine  High  Priest. 

This  simple  treatise  is  not  the  place  for 
critical  discussions.  I  do  not  attempt  a  formal 
vindication  of  the  mystical  and  Messianic  refer- 
ence of  Psalm  ex.  All  I  can  do  here,  and 
perhaps  all  I  should  do,  is  to  affirm  solemnly  my 


PSALM  CX  27 

belief  in  it,  at  the  feet  of  Christ.  I  am  perfectly 
aware  that  now,  within  the  Church,  and  by  men 
unquestionably  Christian  as  well  as  learned,  our 
Lord's  own  interpretation  of  that  Psalm,*  involv- 
ing as  it  does  His  assertion  of  its  Davidic 
authorship,  is  treated  as  quite  open  to  criticism 
and  disproof.  One  such  scholar  does  not  hesitate 
to  say  that,  if  the  majority  of  modern  experts 
are  right  as  to  the  non -Davidic  authorship,  and 
he  seems  to  think  that  they  are,  "  our  Lord's 
artjument  breaks  down."  All  I  would  remark 
upon  such  utterances,  coming  from  men  who  all 
tlie  while  sincerely  adore  Christ  as  their  Lord 
and  God,  is  that  they  must  surely  open  the  way 
towards  conceptions  of  His  whole  teaching  which 
make  for  the  ruin  of  faith.  For  the  question  is 
not  at  all  whether  our  Kedeemer  consented  to 
submit  to  limits  in  His  conscious  human  know- 
ledge ;  I  for  one  hold  that  He  assuredly  did  so. 
It  is  whether  He  consented  to  that  sort  of 
limitation  which  alone,  in  respect  of  imperfection 
of  knowledge,  is  the  real  peril  of  a  teacher,  and 
which  is  his  fatal  peril — the  ignorance  of  his 
own  ignorance,  and  a  consequent  claim  to  teach 
where  he  does  not  know.  In  human  schools 
the  betrayal  of  that  sort  of  ignorance  is  a  death- 
blow to  confidence,  not  only  in  some  special 
utterance,  but  in  the  teacher,  for  it  strikes  at 
*  Matt.  xxii.  44  ;  Luke  xx.  42.     Cp.  Acts  ii.  34. 


28      OUR  GREAT  MELCHIZEDEK 

his  claim  not  to  knowledge  so  much  as  to 
wisdom,  to  balance  and  insight  of  thought.  I 
venture  to  say  that  recent  drifts  of  speculation 
shew  how  rapidly  the  conception  of  a  fallible 
Christ  developes  towards  that  of  a  wholly  im- 
perfect and  untrustworthy  Christ.  And,  looking 
again  at  the  vast  phenomenon  of  the  Portrait  in 
the  Gospels,  I  hold  that  the  line  of  thought 
which  offers  by  very  far  the  least  difficulty,  not 
to  faith  only  but  to  reason,  is  that  which  relies 
absolutely  on  His  affirmations  wherever  He  is 
pleased  actually  to  affirm. 

So  thinking,  I  take  His  exposition  of  Psalm  ex. 
as  for  me  final.  And  that  exposition  guarantees 
at  once  a  typical  mystery  latent  in  Gen.  xiv. 
and  the  rightness  of  its  development  in  the 
passage  here  before  us. 

But  now,  what  "  message "  has  our  chapter 
for  us,  in  view  of  the  needs  of  our  own  time  ? 

First,  as  to  its  sacerdotal  doctrine.  It  throws 
a  broad  illumination  on  the  grand  finality  and 
uniqueness  of  the  mediatorial  priesthood  of  our 
Lord,  the  Son  of  God.  It  puts  into  the  most 
vivid  possible  contrast  the  age  of  "  the  law  "  and 
that  of  Christ  as  to  the  priestly  conception  and 
institution.  Somehow,  under  the  law,  there  was 
a  need  for  priests  who  were  "  men,  having  in- 
firmity." For  certain  grave  purposes  (not  for 
all,  by  any  means,  even  in  that  legal  period)  it 


MEDIATORIAL  PRIESTHOOD      29 

was  the  will  of  God  that  they  should  staud 
between  His  Israel  and  Him.  But  the  argument 
of  this  chapter,  unless  it  elaborately  veils  its 
true  self  in  clouds,  goes  directly  to  shew  that 
such  properly  mediatorial  functions,  in  the  age  of 
Christ,  are  for  ever  withdrawn  from  "  men,  having 
infirmity."  Where  they  stood  of  old,  one  after 
another,  sacrificing,  interceding,  going  in  behind 
the  veil,  permitted  to  draw  nearer  to  God,  in  an 
official  sanctity,  than  their  brethren,  there  now 
stands  Another,  sublime,  supreme,  alone.  He  is 
Man  indeed,  but  He  is  not  "  man  having 
infirmity."  He  is  higher  than  the  heavens, 
while  He  is  one  with  us.  And  now  our  one 
secret  for  a  complete  approach  to  God  is  to 
come  to  God  "  through  Him."  And  this,  unless 
the  chapter  is  an  elaborate  semblance  of  what 
it  is  not,  means  nothing  if  it  does  not  mean 
that  between  the  Church,  and  between  the  soul, 
and  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  there  is  to  come 
absolutely  nothing  mediatorial.  As  little  as  the 
Jew,  for  ceremonial  purposes,  needed  an  inter- 
mediary in  dealing  with  his  mortal  priest  so 
little  do  we,  for  the  whole  needs  of  our  being, 
need  an  intermediary  in  dealing  with  our  eternal 
Priest. 

In  the  age  of  Christ,  no  office  can  for  one 
moment  put  one  "  man  having  infirmity  "  nearer 
to  God  than  another,  if  this  chapter  means  what 


30      OUR  GREAT  MELCHIZEDEK 

it  says.  Mediatorial  priesthood,  a  very  different 
thing  from  commissioDed  pastorate,  has  no  place 
in  apostolic  Christianity,  with  the  vast  exception 
of  its  sublime  and  solitary  place  in  the  Person  of 
our  most  blessed  Lord. 

Then  further,  the  chapter,  far  from  giving  us 
merely  the  cold  gift  (as  it  would  be  if  this  were 
all)  of  a  negative  certainty  against  unlawful 
human  claims,  gives  us,  as  its  true,  its  inmost 
message,  a  glorious  positive.  It  gives  us  the 
certainty  that,  for  every  human  heart  which 
asks  for  God,  this  wonderful  Christ,  personal, 
eternal,  human,  Divine,  is  quite  immediately 
accessible.  The  hands  of  need  and  trust  have 
but  to  be  lifted,  and  they  hold  Him.  And  He 
is  the  Son.  In  Him  we  have  the  Father. 
We  do  indeed  "  draw  nigh  to  God  through 
Him." 

Therefore  we  will  do  it.  The  thousand  con- 
fusions of  our  time  shall  only  make  this  Divine 
simplicity  the  more  precious  to  us.  We  will 
at  once  and  continually  take  Jesus  Christ  for 
granted  in  all  the  fulness  and  splendour  of  His 
High-priesthood  after  the  order  of  Melcliizedek. 
That  Priesthood  is  for  ever  what  it  is ;  it  is  as 
new  and  young  to-day  in  its  virtue  as  if  the  oath 
had  but  to-day  been  spoken,  and  He  had  but 
to-day  sat  down  at  the  right  hand. 

Happy  we  if  we  use  Him  thus.     He  blesses 


A  STORY  OF  GRACE  31 

those  who  do  so  with  blessings  which  they  can- 
not analyse,  but  which  they  know.  Many  years 
ago  a  Christian  lady,  daughter  of  a  saintly  Non- 
conformist pastor  in  the  west  of  Dorset,  told 
me  how,  in  a  then  distant  time,  her  father  had 
striven  to  teach  a  sick  man,  a  young  gipsy  in 
a  wandering  camp,  to  read,  and  to  come  to 
Christ.  The  camp  moved  after  a  while,  and 
the  young  man,  dying  of  consumption,  took  a 
Bible  with  him.  Time  rolled  on,  and  one  day 
a  gray-haired  gipsy  came  to  the  minister's  door ; 
it  was  the  youth's  father,  with  the  news  of  his 
son's  happy  death,  and  with  his  Bible,  "  Sir, 
I  cannot  read  a  word :  but  he  was  always 
reading  it,  and  he  marked  what  he  liked  with 
a  stick  from  the  fire.  And  he  said  you  would 
find  one  place  marked  with  two  lines ;  it  was 
everything  to  my  poor  lad."  The  leaves  were 
turned,  and  the  stick  was  found  to  have  scored 
two  lines  at  the  side  of  Heb.  vii.  25:  "He  is 
able  also  to  save  them  to  the  uttermost  that 
come  unto  God  by  Him,  seeing  that  He  ever 
liveth  to  make  intercession  for  them." 


CHAPTER  V 
THE   BETTER  COVENANT 

Heb.  viii. 

THE  Person  and  greatness  of  our  High  Priest 
are  now  full  before  the  readers  of  the 
Epistle.  The  paragraph  we  enter  next,  after 
one  more  deliberate  contemplation  of  His 
dignity  and  His  qualifications,  proceeds  to  ex- 
pound His  relation  to  the  better  and  eternal 
Covenant.  We  shall  find  here  also  messages 
appropriate  to  our  time. 

The  first  step  then  is  a  review,  a  summing  up, 
a  "  look  again "  upon  the  true  King  of  Eight- 
eousness  and  peace  (verses  1,  2).  "  Such  a 
High  Priest  we  have."  It  is  a  wonderful  affir- 
mation, not  only  of  His  existence  but  of  His 
relation  to  "  us,"  His  people.  "  We  have  "  Him. 
He  has  taken  His  seat  indeed  "  at  the  right 
hand  of  the  throne  of  the  majesty  in  the 
heavens."  But  this  great  exaltation  has  not 
removed  Him  for  a  moment  out  of  our  posses- 
sion ;    we   have    Him.     He    is    now    the    great 

32 


WE  HAVE  33 

Minister,  the  supreme  sacerdotal  Functionary, 
of  the  heavenly  sanctuary,  "  the  true  taber- 
nacle," T%  aK'i)vrj^  Trj<;  a\7}6ivrj<;,  the  non-figura- 
tive reality  of  which  the  Mosaic  structure  was 
only  the  shadow ;  the  true  scene  of  unveiled 
Presence  and  immortal  worship,  "  pitched "  by 
Him  whose  face  makes  Heaven,  and  makes  it  all 
one  temple.  But  this  sublimity  of  our  Priest's 
place  and  power  does  not  make  Him  in  the 
least  less  ours ;  we  have  Him. 

The  words  invite  us  to  a  new  and  deliberate 
look  upward,  and  then  to  a  recollection  deeper 
than  ever  that  He  is  held  spiritually  in  our 
very  hands ;  that  He  is  a  possession,  nearer  to 
us  than  any  other. 

Then  (verses  3  and  following)  the  thought 
moves  towards  the  sacrificial  and  offertorial 
qualifications  of  this  great  and  most  sacred 
Person.  He  is  what  He  is,  our  High  Priest, 
our  Minister  of  the  sanctuary  above,  on  perfectly 
valid  grounds.  For  He  is,  what  every  sacerdotal 
minister  must  be,  an  Offerer.  And  He  is  this 
in  a  sense,  in  a  way,  congruous  to  His  heavenly 
position.  He  has  no  blood  of  goats  and 
calves  to  present,  like  the  priests  on  earth. 
Indeed,  were  He  "  on  earth "  (ver.  4),  this 
greatest  of  all  High  Priests  "  would  not  even  be 
a  priest "  (ovB'  av  rjv  lepev'i),  an  ordinary  priest. 
For  that  function,  says  the  Writer,  is  already  filled, 
3 


34         THE  BETTER  COVENANT 

"  according  to  the  law,"  by  the  Aaronic  order,  to 
which  He  never  belonged  and  never  could 
belong  (see  vii.  13,  14).  It  is  in  charge  of  the 
sacred  servants  (Xarpevova-cv)  of  the  earthly 
sanctuary,  the  God-given  type  and  shadow 
(ver.  5)  of  the  realities  of  Heaven,  but  no  more 
than  their  type  and  shadow,  partial  and  transient. 
No,  His  sacerdotal  qualification  is  of  another 
sort  and  a  greater.  What  it  is  which  "  He 
hath  to  offer"  in  the  celestial  Holiest  is  not  yet 
explicitly  said ;  that  is  reserved  for  the  ninth 
chapter,  to  which  this  is  but  the  vestibule.  But 
already  the  Epistle  emphasizes  the  truth  that 
"  He  hath  someivhat  to  offer,"  so  that  we  may 
fully  realize  the  completeness  of  His  high- 
priestly  power. 

It  may  be  well  to  pause  here,  and  to  ask 
whether  this  passage  reveals  that  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  is  at  this  moment  "  offering  "  for  us, 
in  His  heavenly  life.  We  are  all  aware  that 
this  has  been  widely  held  and  earnestly  pressed, 
sometimes  into  inferences  which,  as  far  as  I  can 
see,  cannot  at  all  be  borne  even  by  the  doctrine 
that  He  is  offering  for  us  now.  In  particular  it 
is  said  that,  if  He  in  glory  is  offering  for  His 
Church,  then  His  Church  must,  in  some  sense,  as 
in  a  counterpart,  be  offering  here  on  earth,  in  union 
with  Him.  In  short,  there  must  still  be  priests 
on    earth  who   are    ministers  of  "  the  example 


OFFERING  AND  OFFERER        35 

and  shadow  of  heavenly  things."  But  surely,  if 
this  Epistle  makes  anything  clear,  it  makes  it 
clear  that  our  great  Priest  is  the  superseding 
fulfilment  of  all  such  ministrations  done  by 
"  men  having  infirmity."  It  is  His  glory,  and 
it  is  ours,  that  He  is  known  by  us  as  our  one 
and  all-suflicient  Offerer  and  Mediator.  It  is 
precisely  as  such  that  "  we  have  Him,"  in  a  way 
to  distinguish  our  position  and  privilege  in  a 
magnificent  sense  from  that  of  those  who  needed 
the  sacerdotal  aid  of  their  mortal  brethren. 

But  then  further,  does  this  passage  really 
intimate  at  all  that  He  is  offering  now  ?  The 
thought  appears  to  be  decisively  negatived  by 
the  grandeur  of  the  terras  of  the  first  verse  of 
this  chapter.  Where,  in  the  heavenly  sanctuary, 
is  our  High  Priest  now  ?  He  has  "  taken  His 
seat  on  the  right  hand  of  the  throne  of  the 
majesty."  But  enthronement  is  a  thought  out 
of  line  with  the  act  and  attitude  of  oblation. 
Tlie  offerer  stands  before  the  Power  he  ap- 
proaches. Our  Priest  is  seated — where  Deity 
alone  can  sit. 

Does  not  this  tell  us  that  the  words  (ver.  3), 
"  It  is  necessary  that  He  too  should  have  some- 
thing to  offer,"  are  to  be  explained  not  of  a 
continuous  historical  procedure  (to  which  idea, 
by  the  way,  the  aorist  verb  irpoaeve'yK'p  would 
hardly  be  appropriate),  but  as  the  statement  of  a 


36         THE  BETTER  COVENANT 

principle  in  terms  of  time  ?  The  "  necessity  "  is, 
not  that  He  should  have  something  to  offer  now, 
and  to-morrow,  and  always,  but  that  the  matter 
and  act  of  offering  should  belong  to  Him.  And 
they  do  so  belong,  in  principle  and  effect,  for 
priestly  purposes,  by  having  been  once  and  for 
ever  handled  and  performed  by  Him.  His 
"  need  "  is,  not  to  be  always  offering,  but  to  be 
always  an  Offerer.  He  meets  that  need  by 
being  for  ever  the  Priest  who  had  Himself  to 
offer,  and  who  offered  Himself,  and  who  now 
dispenses  from  His  sacerdotal  seat  the  benedic- 
tions based  upon  the  sacrifice  of  which  He  is  for 
ever  the  once  accepted  Offerer. 

Only  thus  viewed,  I  venture  to  say,  can  this 
phrase  be  read  in  its  full  harmony  with  the 
whole  Epistle.  "  He  hath  somewhat  to  offer," 
in  the  sense  that  He  has  for  ever  the  grand 
sacerdotal  qualification  of  being  an  Offerer  who, 
having  executed  that  function,  now  bears  to  all 
eternity  its  character.  But  He  is  not  therefore 
always  executing  the  function.  Otherwise  He 
must  descend  from  His  throne.  But  His  en- 
thronement, His  session,  is  a  fact  of  His  present 
position  as  important  and  characteristic  as 
possible  in  this  whole  Epistle. 

Aaron  was  not  always  offering.  But  he  was 
always  an  offerer.  On  the  morrow  of  the 
Atonement  Day    he    was    as    much    an    offerer 


WHAT  THE  COVENANT  IS        37 

as  on  the  day  itself.  All  through  the  year, 
even  until  the  next  Atonement,  he  was  still  an 
offerer.  He  exercised  his  priestly  functions  at 
all  times  because,  in  principle,  he  "had  some- 
what to  offer  "  in  its  proper  time.  Oitr  High 
Priest  knows  only  one  Atonement  Day,  and  it  is 
over  for  ever.  And  His  Israel  have  it  for  their 
privilege  and  glory  not  to  be  "  serving  unto  an 
example  and  shadow "  of  even  His  work  and 
office,  but  to  be  going  always,  daily  and  hourly, 
direct  to  Him  in  His  perfect  Priesthood,  in  which 
they  always  "  have  "  Him,  and  to  be  always 
abiding,  in  virtue  of  Him,  "  boldly,"  "  with  con- 
fidence," in  the  very  presence  of  the  Lord. 

Then  the  chapter  moves  forward  (verses  6  and 
following)  to  consider  the  relation  between  our 
High  Priest  and  the  Covenant  of  which  He  is  the 
Mediator.  Here  begins  one  of  the  great  themes 
of  the  Epistle.  It  will  recur  again  and  again, 
till  at  last  we  read  (xiii.  20)  of  "the  blood  of 
the  Covenant  eternal." 

This  pregnant  subject  is  introduced  by  a  solemn 
reference  to  the  "  promises  upon  which  has 
been  legislated,"  legally  insituted,  v€vofiodeTi]Tat, 
this  new  compact  between  God  and  man.  The 
reference  is  to  the  thirtieth  chapter  of  Jeremiah, 
from  which  an  extract  is  here  made  at  lengtli. 
There  the  prophet,  in  the  name  of  his  God,  ex- 
plicitly   foretells  the    advent  of  what    we  may 


38         THE  BETTER  COVENANT 

reverently  call  a  new  departure  in  the  revealed 
relations  between  Jehovah  and  His  people.  At 
Sinai  He  had  engaged  to  bless  them,  yet  under 
conditions  which  left  them  to  discover  the  total 
inability  of  their  own  sin-stricken  wills  to  meet 
His  holy  while  benignant  will.  They  failed,  they 
broke  the  pact,  and  judgment  followed  them  of 
course.  But  now  another  order  is  to  be  taken. 
Their  King  and  Lawgiver,  without  for  one 
moment  ceasing  to  be  such,  will  also  undertake 
another  function,  wholly  new,  as  regards  the 
method  of  covenant.  He  will  place  Himself  so 
upon  their  side  as  Himself  to  readjust  and 
empower  their  affections  and  their  wills.  He 
"  will  put  His  laws  into  their  mind  and  write 
them  upon  their  hearts,"  and  "  they  shall  all 
know  Him,"  with  the  knowledge  which  is  life 
eternal.  And  furtlier,  as  the  antecedent  to  all 
this,  in  order  to  open  the  path  to  it,  to  place 
them  where  this  wonderful  blessing  can  rightly 
reach  and  fill  them,  their  King  and  Lawgiver 
pledges  Himself  to  a  2?rct'to?<s  pardon,  full  and 
unreserved  ;  "  Their  sins  and  their  iniquities 
I  will  remember  no  more."  They  shall  be  set 
before  Him  in  an  acceptance  as  full  as  if  tliey 
had  never  fallen.  And  then,  not  as  the  condition 
to  this  but  as  the  sequel  to  it.  He  will  so  deal 
with  them,  internally  and  spiritually,  that  they 
shall  will  His  will  and  live  His  law.     There  shall 


THE  TWO  COVENANTS  39 

be  no  mechanical  compulsion ;  "  their  mind," 
"  their  hearts,"  full  as  ever  of  personality  and 
volition,  shall  be  the  matter  acted  upon.  But 
there  shall  be  a  gracious  and  prevailing  influence, 
deciding  their  spiritual  action  along  its  one  true 
line  ;  "  I  will  put,"  "  I  will  write." 

This  is  the  new,  the  better,  the  everlasting 
Covenant.  It  is  placed  here  in  the  largest  and 
most  decisive  contrast  over  against  the  old 
covenant,  the  compact  of  Sinai,  "  written  and 
engraven  in  stones  "  (2  Cor.  iii.  7).  That  com- 
pact had  done  its  mysterious  work,  in  convincing 
man  of  his  sinful  incapacity  to  meet  the  will  of 
God.  Now  emerges  its  wonderful  antithesis,  in 
which  man  is  first  entirely  pardoned,  with  a  pardon 
which  means  acceptance,  peace,  re-iustatement 
into  the  home  and  family  of  God,  and  then  and 
therefore  is  internally  transfigured  by  his  Father's 
power  into  a  being  who  loves  his  Father's  law. 

What  the  prophet  foretold  was  claimed  by 
the  Lord  Christ  Himself,  as  fulfilled  in  His 
Person  and  His  work,  when  He  took  the  cup  of 
blessing,  at  the  feast  of  the  new  Passover  of  the 
new  Israel,  and  said,  "  This  cup  is  the  new 
covenant  in  my  blood."  And  what  He  so 
claimed  His  great  apostle  rejoiced  in,  when  he 
wrote  to  Corinth  (2  iii.  6,  etc.)  of  the  "  ministry 
of  the  new  covenant,'!  the  covenant  of  the  Spirit, 
of  life,  of  glory.     And  here  the  same  truth  is 


40         THE  BETTER  COVENANT 

stated  again,  and  in  strong  connexion  again  with 
Him  who  is  at  once  its  Sacrifice,  its  Surety,  its 
Mediator ;  the  Cause,  and  Guardian,  and  Giver 
of  all  its  blessings.  He  is  such  that  it  is  such ; 
ours  is  "  so  great  a  salvation,"  because  of  so  great 
and  wonderful  a  High  Priest,  the  possessor  in 
very  deed  of  "  somewhat  to  offer,"  and  now,  with 
hands  full  of  the  fruits  of  that  offering,  "  seated  " 
for  us  "  on  the  right  hand  of  the  throne  of  the 
majesty  in  the  heavens." 

Here  is  a  message  for  our  times,  in  a  sense 
which  seems  to  me  special,  pressing,  and  deeply 
beneficent.  For  the  terms  of  that  new  covenant 
are  nothing  less  than  the  glorious  essence,  the 
Divine  peculiarity,  of  the  Gospel  of  the  grace  of 
God.  This  forgiveness,  this  most  sincere  and 
entirely  unearned  amnesty,  this  oblivion  of  the 
sins  of  the  people  of  God — do  we  hear  very 
much  about  it  now,  even  where  by  tradition  it 
might  be  most  expected  ?  But  do  we  not  need 
it  now  ?  Was  there  ever  a  time  when  human 
hearts  would  be  more  settled  and  more  energized 
than  now,  amidst  their  moral  restlessness,  by  a 
wise,  thoughtful,  but  perfectly  unmistakable  re- 
affirmation of  the  sublime  fulness  of  Divine 
forgiveness  in  Christ  ?  Men  may  think  that 
they  can  do  without  that  message.  They  may 
bid  us  throw  the  whole  weight  of  preaching  upon 
self-sacrifice,  upon  social  service,  upon  conduct  at 


A  TIMELY  TRUTH  41 

large.  But  the  fully  wakeful  soul  knows  that 
it  is  only  then  capacitated  for  self-sacrifice  in  the 
Lord's  footsteps  when  it  has  received  the  warrant 
of  forgiveness,  written  large  in  His  sacred  blood, 
finding  pardon  and  peace  at  the  foot  of  His 
sacrificial  Cross.  Then  turn  to  the  second  limb 
of  the  covenant,  a  limb  greater  even  than  the 
first,  inasmuch  as  for  it  the  first  is  provided  and 
guaranteed.  Do  we  hear  too  much  about  this 
covenant  blessing  now  ?  Do  our  pulpits  too 
frequently  and  too  fully  give  out  the  affirmation 
that  God  in  Christ  stands  pledged  and  covenanted 
to  work  the  moral  transfiguration  of  His  believing 
Israel,  to  act  so  on  "  the  first  springs  of  thought 
and  will "  that  our  being  shall  freely  respond  to 
His  free  action  upon  it,  and  will  His  will,  and 
live  His  law  ?  But  was  there  ever  greater  need 
for  such  an  affirmation  than  in  our  time,  so 
restless,  so  unsatisfied,  and,  deep  below  all 
its  superficial  arrogance,  so  disappointed,  so 
discouraged  ? 

Let  us  return  upon  the  rich  treasures  of  this 
great  Compact  of  God  in  Christ.  The  Covenant 
is  ever  new,  for  it  is  eternal.  And  it  lies  safe  in 
the  ministering  hands  of  Him  who  died  to 
inaugurate  it  and  make  it  good,  and  who  lives  to 
shower  its  blessings  down.  He  is  on  the  right 
hand  of  the  throne  of  the  majesty  in  the  heavens. 
And  "  wc  have  "  Him. 


CHAPTER  VI 
SANCTUARY   AND   SACRIFICE 

Heb.  ix. 

THE  Epistle  has  exhibited  to  us  the  glory  of  the 
eternal  Priest  and  the  wealth  and  grandeur 
of  the  new  Covenant.  It  advances  now  towards 
the  Sanctuary  and  the  Sacrifice  wherein  we  see 
that  covenant  sanctified  and  sealed,  under  the 
auspices  of  our  great  "  Priest  upon  His  throne." 

The  Teacher  first  dilates  to  the  Hebrews 
upon  the  outstanding  features  of  the  type.  He 
enumerates  the  main  features  of  that  "  sanctuary, 
adapted  to  this  (visible)  world"  (to  arftov, 
KoafiiKov),  which  was  attached  to  the  first 
covenant  (ver.  1).*  Particularly,  he  emphasizes 
its  double  structure,  which  presented  first  a 
consecrated  chamber,  holy  but  not  holiest,  the 
depository  of  lamp  and  table,  but  then  beyond 
it,  parted  from  it  by  the  inner  curtain,  the 
adytum  itself,  the  Holiest  Place,  where  lay  ready 

*  Assuredly  we  must  delete  tJKyjvr]  from  the  text  iu  this  verso, 
and  understand  diaOriKr]  (see  viii.  13)  after  ij  wpilxr-q. 
42 


THE   HOLIEST  43 

for  use  "  a  golden  censer,"  the  vessel  needful  for 
the  making  of  the  incense-cloud  which  should 
veil  the  glory,  and,  above  all,  the  Ark  of  that 
first  covenant  of  which  so  much  has  now  been 
said.  There  it  lay,  with  the  manna  and  the 
budding  rod,  symbols  of  Mosaic  and  Aaronic 
power  and  function ;  and  the  tablets  of  that 
law  which  was  written  not  on  the  heart  but  on 
the  stone ;  and  the  mercy-seat  above  them,  and 
the  cherubic  bearers  of  the  Shechinah  above  the 
mercy-seat ;  symbols  of  a  reconciliation  and  an 
access  yet  to  be  revealed  (verses  2—5). 

Such  was  the  sanctuary,  as  depicted  to  the 
mind  of  the  believing  Hebrew  in  the  books 
which  he  almost  worshipped  as  the  oracles  of 
God.  That  tabernacle  he  had  never  seen  ;  that 
ark  he  knew  had  long  vanished  out  of  sight. 
The  temple  of  Herod,  with  its  vacant  Holiest, 
was  the  sanctuary  of  his  generation.  But  the 
Mosaic  picture  of  the  Tent  and  of  the  Ark  was 
for  him  the  abiding  standard,  the  Divine  ideal, 
the  pattern  of  the  realities  in  the  heavens  ;  and  to 
it  accordingly  the  Epistle  directs  his  thought,  as  it 
prepares  to  display  those  realities  before  him.* 

*  I  do  not  attempt  in  these  papers  to  do  more  than  allude 
to  the  controversy  of  our  time  over  the  historical  character 
of  the  Mosaic  books.  But  I  must  allude  in  puswug  to  a  note- 
worthy German  critique  of  the  Wellhausen  theory,  "  by  a 
former  adherent,"  W.  Moller :  Bedenken  gegen  die  Graf- 
jydUuiusenscJie    Ilypothcse,   von    eine'm   friiheren    Anhdngcr 


44     SANCTUARY  AND  SACRIFICE 

Then  it  proceeds  to  a  similar  presentation  of 
one  great  feature  in  the  ritual,  the  "  praxis," 
connected  with  this  Tent  of  Sanctuaries.  It 
takes  the  reader  to  his  Book  of  Leviticus,  and 
to  its  order  of  Atonement.  There  (ch.  xvi.) 
a  profound  emphasis  is  laid  upon  both  the 
secluded  sanctity  of  the  inner  shrine,  the  place 
of  the  Presence,  and  the  sacrificial  process  by 
which  alone  the  rare  privilege  of  entrance  into 
it  could  be  obtained.  The  outer  chamber  was 
the  daily  scene  of  priestly  ministration.  But 
the  inner  was,  officially  at  least,  entered  once 
only  in  the  year,  and  by  the  High  Priest  alone, 
in  the  solitary  dignity  of  his  office.  And  even 
he  went  in  there  only  as  bearing  in  his  very 
hands  the  blood  of  immolated  victims,  blood 
which  he  offered,  presented,  in  the  Holiest,  with 
an  express  view  to  the  Divine  amnesty  for 
another  year's  tale  of  "  ignorances  "  {ar^vorjfjbara, 
ver.  7),  his  own  and  the  people's. 

Such  was  the  sanctuary,  such  the  atoning 
ritual,  attached  to  the  first  covenant.  All  was 
"  mysteriously  meant,"    with    a  significance    in- 

(Giitersloh,  1899).  The  writer,  a  young  and  vigorous  student 
and  thinker,  explains  with  remarkable  force  the  immense 
difficulties  from  the  purely  critical  point  of  view  in  the  way 
of  the  theory  that  the  account  of  the  Tabernacle  Avas  invented 
by  "  Levitistic "  leaders  of  the  time  of  the  Captivity.  The 
work  has  been  translated  into  English,  and  published  by  the 
Religious  Tract  Society  "  Are  the  Critics  right?  " 


THE  ANTITYPE  45 

finitely  deeper  than  what  any  thouglit  of  Moses, 
or  of  Ezra,  could  of  itself  have  given  it.  "  The 
Holy  Ghost  intimated"  (vcr.  8),  through  that 
guarded  shrine  and  those  solitary,  seldom-granted, 
death-conditioned  entrances  into  it,  things  of 
uttermost  moment  for  the  soul  of  man.  There 
stood  the  Tent,  there  went  in  the  lonely  Priest, 
with  the  blood  of  bull  and  goat,  as  "  a  parable 
for  the  period  now  present,"  *  the  time  of  the 
Writer  and  his  readers,  in  which  a  ritual  of 
offering  was  still  maintained  whose  annual  re- 
currence proved  its  inadequacy,  its  non-finality. 
Yes,  this  majestic  but  sombre  system  pictured 
a  state  of  jealous  reserve  between  the  worship- 
pers and  their  God.  Its  propitiations  were  of 
a  kind  which,  in  the  natm^e  of  things,  could  not 
properly  and  in  the  way  of  virtual  force  set  the 
conscience  free  from  the  sense  of  guilt,  "per- 
fecting the  worshipper  conscience-wise."  They 
could  only  "  sanctify  with  a  view  to  the  purity 
of  the  flesh  "  (ver.  13),  satisfying  the  conditions 
of  a  national  and  temporal  acceptance.  Its 
holiest  place  was  indeed  approachable,  once 
annually,  by  one  representative  person ;  enough 

*  I  think  the  Revisers  are  right  in  giving  ^'noiv  present" 
instead  of  "  </te?i  present "  as  the  rendering  for  Tbv  evearf\K(na. 
(ver.  9).  The  Epistle  alludes,  so  I  should  conjecture,  to  the 
period  of  its  writing  as  a  time  when  the  sacrifices  were  still  going 
on,  albeit  on  the  eve  of  cessation. — It  seems  best  to  read  ko.Q'  r\v, 
not  KO.Q'  8v,  in  ver.  9  :  "in  aecordancejwith  which  parable." 


46     SANCTUARY  AND  SACRIFICE 

to  illustrate  and  to  seal  a  hope ;  but  otherwise, 
and  far  more  deeply,  the  conditions  symbolized 
separation  and  a  Divine  reserve.  But  "  the  good 
things  to  come  "  *  were  in  the  Divine  view  all 
along.  The  "  time  of  reformation "  (ver.  1 0), 
of  the  rectification  of  the  failures  suffered  under 
the  first  covenant,  drew  near.  Beliold  Messiah 
steps  upon  the  scene,  the  true  Hiyh  Priest 
(ver.  11).  Victim  and  Sacrificer  at  once,  He 
sheds  His  own  sacrificial  blood  (ver.  12)  on 
the  altar  of  Golgotha,  to  be  His  means  (8ia 
c.  gen.)  of  acceptable  approach.  And  then  He 
passes,  through  the  avenue  of  a  sanctuary  "  not 
made  with  hands"  (ver.  11),  even  the  heavenly 
world  itself  (cp.  BtekrjXvdora  tov<;  ovpavov<;, 
iv.  14),  into  the  Holiest  Place  of  the  eternal 
Presence  on  the  throne.  He  goes  in  thither, 
there  to  be,  and  there  to  do,  all  that  we  know 
of  from  the  long  context  previous  to  this  chapter, 
even  to  sit  down  accepted  at  the  right  hand  of 
the  majesty  on  higli.  King  of  Righteousness  and 
Peace.  And  this  action  and  entrance  is,  in  its 
very  nature,  a  thing  done  once  and  for  ever. 
The  true  High  Priest,  being  what  He  is,  doing 
what  He  has  done,  has  indeed  "  found  eternal 
redemption  for  us "  (ver.   1 2).     It  is  infinitely 

*  Possibly  wc  should  read  tQv  yevofi^fiov  dyaduy,  "  the  good 
things  that  are  come"  (R.V.  marg.).  But  the  practical  differ- 
ence i.s  not  great. 


BY  MEANS  OF  DEATH  47 

unnecessary  now  to  imagine  a  repetition  of  sacri- 
fice, entrance,  offering,  acceptance,  for  Him,  and 
for  us  in  Him.     Such  an  Oblation,  the  self-offer- 
ing of  the   Incarnate  Son  in  the  power  of  the 
Eternal  Spirit  (ver.  14),  what  can  it  not  do  for 
the  believing  worshipper's  welcome  in,  and  his 
perfect  peace  in  the  assurance  of  the  covenanted 
love  of  God  ?      Is  it  not  adequate  to  "  purge  the 
conscience  from  dead  works,"  to  lift  from  it,  that 
is  to  say,  the  death-load  of  unforgiven  transgres- 
sions, and  to  lead  the  Christian  in,  as  one  with 
his  atoning  Lord,  "  to  serve  a  living  God,"  with  the 
happy  service  of  a  worshipper  {\arpevetv)^\\o  need 
"  go  no  more  out "  from  the  Holy  Place  of  peace  ? 
But  the  Teacher  has  not  yet  done  with  the 
wealth  of  the  Mosaic  types  of  our  full  salvation. 
He  has  more  to  say  about  the  profound  truth 
that  the  New  Covenant  needed  for  its  Mediator,  its 
Herald,  its  Guarantor  and  Conveyer  of  blessing, 
not  a  Moses  but  a  Messiah,  who  could  both  die 
and  reign,  could  at  once  be  Sacrifice  aud  Priest. 
Covenants,  in  the  normal  order  of  God's  will  in 
Scripture,  demanded  death  for  their  ratification. 
"  Where  covenant  is,  there  must  be  brought  in 
the  death  of  the  covenant-victim."  *     So  it  was 

*  So,  with  the  late  Professor  Scholefield  {Hints  on  a  New 
Translation)  I  venture  to  render  tov  Siadeixivov.  I  am  con- 
vinced that  this  rendering,  though  it  has  the  serious  difficulty 
of  lacking  any  clear  parallel  to  certify  the  application  of 
diaOe/jL^vov,  is  necessitated  by  the  connexion. 


48      SANCTUARY  AND  SACRIFICE 

with  the  old  covenant  (verses  18-21)  in  the 
narrative  of  Exodus  xxiv.  So,  throughout  the 
Mosaic  rules,  we  find  "  remission,"  practically 
always,  conditioned  by  "  blood-shedding "  (ver. 
22).  Peace  with  violated  holiness  was  to  be 
attained  only  by  means  of  sacrificial  death. 
The  terrestrial  sanctuary,  viewed  as  polluted 
by  the  transgressions  of  the  worshippers  who 
sought  its  benefits,  required  sacrificial  death,  the 
blood  of  bulls  and  goats,  so  to  "  cleanse  "  it  that 
God  could  meet  Israel  there  in  peace  (ver.  23). 
Even  so,  only  after  a  higher  and  holier  order, 
must  it  be  with  the  better  covenant  and  that 
invisible  sanctuary  where  a  reconciled  God  may 
for  ever  meet  in  peace  His  spiritual  Israel. 
There  must  be  priestly  immolation  and  an 
offered  sacrifice ;  there  must  be  peace  con- 
ditioned by  life-blood  shed.  And  such  is  the 
work  of  our  Messiah-Priest.  He  has  "  borne 
the  sins  of  many"  (ver.  28).  Presenting  Him- 
self (ver.  6)  as  the  Atonement  Victim,  in  the 
heavenly  Holiest,  He  has  thereby  "  borne," 
uplifted  (aueveyKelv),  in  that  Presence,  for 
pardon  and  peace,  the  sins  of  the  new  Israel. 
And  so  "  the  heavenly  things "  are,  relatively 
to  that  Israel,  "  cleansed  "  ;  their  God  can  meet 
them  in  that  sanctuary  with  an  intimacy  and 
access  free  and  perfect,  because  their  High 
Priest    and    Mediator    has    done    His  work   for 


BY  MEANS  OF  DEATH  49 

them.  For  ever  and  ever  now  they  need  no 
new  sacrifice ;  His  blood,  once  shed,  is  eternally 
sufficient.  Aye,  and  they  need  now  for  ever  no 
repeated  offering  (ver.  25)  of  sacrifice,  no  new 
presentation  of  His  blood  before  the  throne,  since 
once  He  has  taken  His  place  upon  it.  To  offer 
again  He  must  suffer  again  (ver.  26).  For  it  is 
the  law  of  His  office  first  to  offer — and  then  to 
take  His  place  at  the  right  hand.  He  must  leave 
that  place,  He  must  descend  again  to  a  cross,  if 
He  is  to  take  again  the  attitude  of  presentation. 
"  Henceforth  "  He  sits,  "  expecting  "  (see  below, 
X.  13),  "till  His  enemies  be  made  His  footstool." 
And  His  Israel  on  their  part  wait  (ver.  28), 
"  expecting,"  till  in  that  bright  promised  day 
"  He  appears,  the  second  time,  without  sin,"  un- 
encumbered by  the  burthen  He  once  carried  for 
them,  "  unto  salvation,"  the  salvation  which  means 
the  final  glory.  "  Once,  only  once  " — this  is  the 
sublime  law  of  that  Sacrifice  and  that  Offering. 
As  death  for  us  men  comes  "once,"  and  then 
there  follows  "judgment,"  so  the  death  of  Christ, 
the  "  offering  "  of  Christ,  comes  "  once,"  and  then 
comes,  in  a  wonderful  paradox,  not  judgment  but 
"  salvation,"  for  them  that  are  found  in  Him. 

The   messages  of  this    chapter    for  our  time 

are    equally  manifest   and  weighty.      It    closes 

with  the  assertion  of  a  principle  which  should 

be  for    all    time  decisive   against  all  sorts  and 

4 


50     SANCTUARY  AND  SACRIFICE 

forms  of  "  re-presentation "  of  the  Lord  our 
Sacrifice.  He  has  "  offered  "  Himself  once  and 
for  ever,  and  is  now,  on  our  behalf,  not  in  the 
Presence  only  but  upon  the  Throne.  Yet  more 
urgent,  more  vital,  if  possible,  is  the  affirmation 
here  of  the  need  and  of  the  virtue  of  His 
vicarious  death.  The  chapter  puts  His  blood- 
shedding  before  us  in  a  way  as  remote  as 
possible  from  a  mere  example,  or  from  a 
suffering  meant  to  do  its  work  mainly  by  a 
mysterious  impartation  to  us  of  the  power  to 
suffer.  He  dies  "for  the  redemption  of  the 
transgressions  under  the  first  covenant " — in 
other  words,  for  the  welcome  back  to  God  of 
those  who  had  sinned  against  His  awful  Law. 
He  dies  that  we,  "  the  called,"  "  might  receive 
the  promise  of  an  eternal  inheritance."  He  dies, 
He  offers,  that  we,  wholly  and  solely  because  He 
has  done  so,  may  find  the  heavenly,  invisible, 
spiritual  Holiest  a  place  of  perfect  peace  with 
God,  dwelling  in  it  as  in  our  spirits'  home. 

Are  these  the  characteristic  accents  of  the 
voice  of  the  modern  Church  ?  Have  we  not 
need  to  listen  again,  reverent  and  believing, 
to  the  ninth  chapter  of  the  Hel^rews,  as  it 
discourses  about  sanctuary,  and  sacrifice,  and 
offering,  and  peace  ? 


CHAPTER  VII 
FULL,   PERFECT,   AND   SUFFICIENT 

Heb.  X. 

THE  heaven-taught  Teacher  has  led  us  now 
along-  the  avenue  of  the  Levitical  fore- 
shadowhigs,  through  the  prophetic  symbolism  of 
the  old  high-priesthood,  through  the  holy  place  and 
the  holiest.  The  pathway,  marked  by  the  blood 
of  animal  sacrifices,  hallowing  the  awful  terms 
of  the  covenant  of  works,  has  brought  us  to  the 
true  Tabernacle  and  true  Sacrifice,  to  the  better 
and  final  Covenant,  to  the  supreme  High  Priest. 
The  teaching  has  left  us,  as  the  ninth  chapter 
closes,  "  looking  up  steadfastly  into  heaven,"  recol- 
lecting where  the  Lord  is  and  why  He  is  there  ; 
thinking  how  we,  His  Israel,  "  have  Him  "  for  our 
Eepresentative  and  Mediator  as  He  "  appears  in 
the  presence  of  God  for  us,"  and  expecting  the 
hour  of  joy  and  glory  when  He  will  put  aside 
the  curtains  of  that  tabernacle,  and  come  fortli  to 
crown  us  with  the  final  benediction,  receiving  us 
"  unto  the  salvation"  of  eternity  (ix.  27,  28). 


52    FULL,  PERFECT,  AND  SUFFICIENT 

It  is  a  solemn  but  a  happy  attitude.  It  can 
be  taken  by  those  only  who  have  "  fled  for  refuge 
to  the  hope  set  before  them."  But  they  are  to 
take  it,  as  those  who  feel  beneath  their  feet  the 
rock  of  an  assured  salvation  and  know  their 
open  way  to  the  heart  of  God. 

The  argument  now  proceeds  in  living  con- 
tinuity. Its  business  now  is  to  accentuate  and 
develope  the  supremacy,  the  ultimacy — if  the 
word  may  be  allowed — of  the  finished  work  of 
the  true  High  Priest,  in  contrast  to  the  pro- 
visional and  preparatory  "  law."  The  Writer  has 
said  much  to  us  in  this  way  before,  particularly 
in  the  preceding  three  chapters  of  the  Epistle. 
But  he  must  emphasize  it  again,  for  it  is  the 
inmost  purport  of  his  whole  discourse.  And  he 
must  do  it  now  with  the  urgency  of  one  who  has 
in  view  a  real  peril  of  apostasy.  His  readers 
are  hard  pressed,  by  persuasions  and  by  terrors, 
to  turn  back  from  Christ  to  the  Judaistic 
travesty  of  the  message  of  the  Law.  He  must 
tell  them  not  only  of  tlie  splendour  of  Messiah's 
work  but  of  the  absolute  finality  of  it  for  man's 
salvation.  To  forsake  it  is  to  "  forsake  their  own 
mercy,"  to  "  turn  back  into  perdition." 

So  he  begins  with  a  reminder  of  the  incapacity 
of  the  Law  to  save,  by  pointing  to  the  ceaseless 
repetition  of  the  sacrificial  acts.  Year  by  year, 
on  one  Atonement  Day  after  another,  the  blood- 


CONSCIENCE  OF  SINS  53 

shedding,  the  blood-sprinkling,  the  propitiation, 
had  to  be  done  again.  Year  by  year  accordingly 
the  worshippers  were  treated  as  "  not  perfect " 
(ver.  1);  that  is  to  say,  in  the  clear  light  of 
the  context,  they  were  not  perfect  as  to  recon- 
ciliation, they  were  loaded  still  with  the  burthen 
of  guilt.  The  "  conscience  of  sins "  (ver.  2) 
haunted  them  still,  that  is  to  say,  the  weary 
sense  of  an  unsettled  score  of  offences,  a  posi- 
tion precarious  and  unassured  before  the  Judge. 

We  believe — nay,  with  the  Psalms  in  our 
hands,  such  Psalms  as  xxiii.,  and  xxxii.,  and 
ciii.,  we  know — that  for  the  really  contrite  and 
loyal  heart,  even  under  the  Law,  there  were 
large  experiences  of  peace  and  joy.  But  these 
blessings  were  not  due  to  the  sacrifices  of  the 
tabernacle  or  the  temple,  however  divinely 
ordered.  They  were  due  to  revelations  from 
many  quarters  of  the  character  of  the  Lord 
Jehovah,  and  not  least,  assuredly,  to  the  con- 
viction— how  could  the  more  deeply  taught 
souls  have  helped  it  ?  —  that  this  vast  and 
death-dealing  ceremonial  had  a  goal  which  alone 
could  explain  it,  in  some  transcendent  climax  of 
remission.  But  in  itself  the  ritual  emphasized 
not  gladness  but  judgment,  not  love  but  the 
dread  fact  of  guilt.  And  the  blood  of  goats 
could  not  for  a  moment  be  thought  of  (ver.  4) 
as  hy  itself  able  to  make  peace  with  God.     At 


54    FULL,  PERFECT,  AND  SUFFICIENT 

best  it  laid  stress  on  the  need  of  something 
which,  while  analogous  to  it  on  one  side,  should 
be  transcendently  different  and  greater  on  the 
other. 

The  priests  daily  (ver.  11),  the  high  priest 
yearly,  as  they  slew  and  burnt  the  victims,  and 
sprinkled  blood,  and  wafted  incense,  in  view  of 
Israel's  tale  of  oftences  against  his  King,  were 
all,  by  their  every  action,  prophets  of  that 
mysterious  something  yet  to  come.  They 
"  made  remembrance  of  sins "  (ver.  3),  writing 
always  anew  upon  the  conscience  of  the 
worshipper  the  certainty  that  sin,  in  its  form 
of  guilt,  is  a  tremendous  reality  in  the  court 
of  God,  that  it  calls  importunately  for  propitia- 
tion, while  yet  animal  propitiations  can  never, 
by  their  very  nature,  be  really  propitiatory  of 
themselves.  Yet  the  God  of  Israel  had  com- 
manded them ;  they  could  not  be  mere  forms 
therefore.  What  could  they  be  then  but  types 
and  suggestions  of  a  reality  which  should  at 
last  justify  the  symbolism  by  a  victorious  fulfil- 
ment ?  Thus  was  an  oracle  like  Isa.  liii.  made 
possible.  And  thus,  as  we  are  taught  expressly 
here  (verses  5-7),  the  oracle  of  Psalm  xl.  was 
made  possible,  in  which  "  sacrifices  and  offerings," 
though  prescribed  to  Israel  by  his  King,  were 
not  "  delighted  in "  by  Him,  not  "  willed "  by 
Him  for  their  own  sake  at    all,  but    in  which 


THE  TYPES  FULFILLED  55 

One  speaks  to  the  Eternal  about  another  and 
supreme  immolation,  for  which  He  who  speaks 
"  has  come "  to  present  Himself.  "  Ears  hast 
Thou  opened  for  me,"  runs  the  Hebrew  (Ps.  xl.  6). 
"  A  body  hast  Thou  adjusted  for  me,"  was  the 
Greek  paraphrase  of  the  Seventy,  followed 
by  the  holy  Writer  here.  It  was  as  if  the 
paraphrasts,  looking  onward  to  the  Hope  of 
Israel,  would  interpret  and  expand  the  thought 
of  an  uttermost  obedience,  signified  by  the  ear, 
into  the  completer  thought  of  the  lody  of 
which  the  listening  ear  was  part,  and  which 
should  be  given  up  wholly  in  sacrifice  to 
God.* 

If  this  is  at  all  the  course  of  the  Writer's  ex- 
position, there  is  nothing  arbitrary  in  the  sequel 
to  it.  He  explains  the  enigmatic  Psalm  by 
finding  in  it  the  crucified  and  self-offering 
High  Priest  of  our  profession.  Of  Him  "  the 
roll  of  the  book "  had  spoken,  as  the  supreme 
doer  and  bearer  for  us  of  the  will  of  God. 
His  sacred  Body  was  the  Thing  indicated  by 
the  prophetic  altars  of  Aaron.  When  He 
"  ofiered "  it,  presenting  it  to  the  eternal 
Holiness  on  our  behalf,,  when  He  let  it  be 
done  to  death  because  we  had  sinned,  so  that 
we  might  be  accepted  because  it,  because  He, 
had    suffered — then    did    He    "  fill "    the   types 

*  So  Kay,  on  this  passage,  in  the  Speaker's  ComrmrUary. 


56   FULL,  PERFECT,  AND  SUFFICIENT 

"  full "  of  their  true  meaning,  and  so  close 
their  work  for  ever. 

Yes,  that  work  was  now  for  ever  closed  by 
the  attainment  of  its  goal.  Moreover,  His  work 
of  sacrifice  and  of  offering,  of  suffering  and  of 
presentation,  was  for  ever  finished  also.  This 
is  the  burthen  and  message  of  the  whole  passage 
(verses  11-18).  "Once  for  all"  {k^dira^), 
"  once  for  ever,"  the  holy  Body  has  been  offered 
(ver.  10).  "He  offered  one  sacrifice  for  sins  in 
perpetuity,"  et?  to  Bn}veK€<;  (ver.  12).  And 
therefore,  not  only  for  the  priests  of  the  old 
rite  but  for  the  High  Priest  of  the  heavenly 
order,  "  there  is  no  more  offering  for  sin " 
(ver.  18). 

And  why  ?  Because,  for  the  new  Israel,  for 
the  chosen  people  of  faith  (ver.  39),  the  supreme 
sacrifice  and  offering  has  done  its  work.  It  has 
"sanctified"  them  (verses  10,  29);  that  is  to 
say,  it  has  hallowed  them  into  God's  accepted 
possession  by  its  reconciling  and  redeeming 
efficacy.  For  its  virtue  does  much  more  than 
rescue ;  it  annexes  and  appropriates  what  it 
saves.  It  has  "perfected"  them  (ver.  14);  that 
is  to  say,  it  has  placed  them  effectually  in  that 
position  of  complete  "  peace  with  God "  which 
guilt  while  still  unsettled  makes  impossible.  It 
has  "  put  them  among  the  children,"  within  the 
home  circle  of  Divine  love.     It  has  done  this  "  in 


PEACE  UPON  ISRAEL  57 

perpetuity,"  et9  to  Bi7)P€K€<;  (ver.  14);  that  is  to 
say,  they  will  never  to  the  very  last  need  any- 
thing but  that  sacrifice  and  offering  to  be  the 
cause  and  the  warrant  of  their  place  within  that 
home.  "  Their  sins  and  their  iniquities "  their 
reconciled  Father  "  will  never  remember  any 
more"  against  them  (ver.  17),  in  the  sense  that 
the  sacrifice  once  presented  on  their  behalf  will 
be  before  Him  every  moment  in  the  person  of 
the  Self-Sacrificer,  who  sits  beside  Him,  "  appear- 
ing for  us."  They  are  the  Israel  of  the  great 
New  Covenant.  And  that  covenant,  as  we  have 
already  remembered  (viii.  7—13),  provides  for 
the  spiritual  transformation  of  the  wills  of  the 
covenanters ;  the  law  of  their  God  shall  be 
"  written  on  "  their  very  minds ;  that  is  to  say, 
they  shall  will  His  will  as  their  own.  But  such 
a  "  writing "  demands,  by  the  very  nature  of 
tilings,  that  Jii'st,  not  last,  there  should  be  an 
absolute  remission.  For  without  remission  there 
could  not  be  inward  peace,  nor  therefore  filial 
and  paternal  harmony.  So,  for  this  deep  mass 
of  reasons,  the  new  Israelites  are  Jirst  wholly 
accepted  for  the  sake  of  their  self-offered  High 
Priest,  that  then  they  may  be  wholly  transformed 
by  His  power,  working  through  His  peace,  within 
themselves. 

The  great  closing  paragraphs   of   the   chapter 
(verses  19—39)  are  one  long  application  of  this 


58    FULL,  PERFECT,  AND  SUFFICIENT 

sublime  finality  of  the  one  Offering  and  this  pre- 
sentness  of  our  complete  acceptance.  First,  the 
new  Israelite,  his  "  heart  sprinkled  from  an  evil 
conscience"  (ver.  22),  released,  that  is  to  say,  by 
the  applied  Sacrifice  from  the  haunting  sense  of 
guilt,  and  having  his  "  body  washed  with  pure 
water,"  the  baptismal  sign  and  seal  of  the 
covenant  blessing,  is  to  behave  as  ivJiat  he  is — 
the  child  at  home.  That  home  is  the  Holy 
Place ;  it  is  the  very  Presence  of  his  God ;  but 
it  is  home.  He  is  to  pass  into  that  sanctuary, 
along  the  pathway  traced  by  the  blessed  blood, 
not  hesitating,  but  with  the  "  boldness "  of  an 
absolute  reliance,  perfectly  free  while  perfectly 
and  wonderingly  humbled ;  "  with  a  true  heart, 
in  fulness,  in  full  assurance,  of  faith"  (ver.  22). 
He  is  to  hold  fast  his  avowal  of  assurance,  and 
meanwhile  he  is  to  animate  the  brethren  round 
him  to  a  holy  rivalry  (ver.  24)  of  love  and 
zeal.  He  is  to  maintain  all  possible  worshipping 
union  with  them,  in  the  dawning  light  of  the 
promised  return  of  the  now  enthroned  High 
Priest  (ver.  25). 

Then,  further,  the  new  Israelite  is  to  cherish 
the  grace  of  godly  fear.  The  "  boldness  "  of  the 
loyal  child  is  to  go  along  with  the  clear  recollec- 
tion that  outside  the  holy  home  tliere  lies  only 
"  a  wilderness  of  woe."  To  leave  it,  to  turn  back 
from   it,  to  be  a  renegade  from  covenant  joys, 


MEMORY  AND   HOPE  59 

is  no  mere  exchange  of  tlie  best  for  the  less 
good.  It  means  multiphed  and  capital  rebellion. 
No  legal  shadow-sacrifices  will  shelter  now  the 
soul  that  forsakes  the  eternal  High  Priest  and 
casts  His  Self-Sacrifice  aside.  To  do  that  is  to 
set  out  towards  a  hopeless  retribution,  towards 
the  fire  of  judgment,  the  vengeance  of  the  living 
God  (verses  26-31). 

With  tender  urgency  he  pleads  for  fresh 
memories  and  fresh  resolves  (verses  32-35). 
He  recalls  to  them  days,  not  long  ago,  when 
they  had  borne  shame  and  loss,  "a  conflict  of 
sufferings,"  fellowship  with  outcast  and  im- 
prisoned saints,  spoiling  of  their  own  possessions 
— all  made  more  than  bearable  by  the  joy  of 
their  wonderful  "  enlightenment "  (ver.  32).  Let 
them  do  so  still,  in  full  view  of  the  coming 
crown.  Let  them  grasp  afresh  the  glorious 
privilege  of  "boldness"  (ver.  35),  reaffirming  to 
themselves  with  strong  assurance  that  they  are 
"  sanctified,"  "  perfected,"  at  home  with  God  in 
Christ.  Let  them  rise  up  and  go  on  in  that 
noble  "patience"  (ver.  36)  which  "  suffei-s  and 
is  strong."  It  is  only  "a  very  little  while" 
before  the  High  Priest  will  reappear.  And  the 
"  faith "  which  takes  Him  at  His  word  will,  as 
the  prophet  witnesses  (Hab.  ii.  4),  bridge  that 
little  while  with  a  "  life  "  which  cannot  die.  To 
"shrink    back,"  as   the   same  seer  in  the  same 


6o   FULL,  PERFECT,  AND  SUFFICIENT 

breath  warns  us,  is  to  lose  the  smile  of  God  in 
a  final  ruin.  But  that,  for  us,  cannot  be ;  we, 
in  His  mercy,  relying  upon  the  faithful  Promiser, 
attain  "  the  saving  of  the  soul." 

Now,  as  then,  the  tenth  chapter  of  the  Hebrews 
points  with  a  golden  rod  to  the  one  path  of  life,  and 
peace,  and  perseverance  to  the  end.  "  Ptejoice  in 
the  Lord ;  for  you  it  is  safe  "  (Phil.  iii.  1 ).  The 
"  boldness "  of  a  humble  assurance  of  a  present 
and  a  great  salvation  traces  the  way  for  us,  as 
it  traced  the  way  of  old,  through  holiness  to 
Heaven. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

FAITH   AND   ITS  TOWER 

Hrb.  xi.  (I.) 

THE  eleventh  chapter  of  the  Hebrews  is  a 
pre-emineut  Scripture.  With  the  fullest 
recognition  of  the  Divine  greatness  of  the  whole 
Bible,  never  forgetting  that  "  every  scripture 
hath  in  it  the  Spirit  of  God"  (2  Tim.  iii.  16), 
we  are  yet  aware  as  we  read  that  some  volumes 
in  the  inspired  Library  are  more  pregnant  than 
others,  some  structures  in  the  sacred  city  of  the 
Bible  more  impressive  than  others,  more  rich  in 
interest,  more  responsive  to  repeated  visits.  Such 
a  scripture  among  books  is  this  Epistle,  and 
such  a  scripture  among  chapters  is  that  on 
which  we  enter  now. 

It  is  impressive  by  the  majestic  singleness  of 
its  theme ;  Faith,  from  first  to  last,  is  its  matter 
and  its  burthen.  Further,  it  carries  one  long 
appeal  to  the  heart  by  its  method ;  almost  from 
the  exordium  to  the  very  close  it  deals  with  its 
theme  not  by  abstract  reasoning,  nor  even  by  a 

6i 


62  FAITH  AND   ITS  POWER 

citation  of  inspired  utterances  only.  It  works 
out  its  message  by  a  display,  in  long  and  living 
procession,  of  inspired  human  experiences.  It 
is  to  an  extraordinary  degree  human,  dealing 
all  along  with  names  as  familiar  to  us  as  any 
in  any  history  can  be ;  with  characters  which 
are  perfectly  individual ;  with  lives  lived  in  the 
face  of  difficulty,  danger,  trial,  sorrow,  as  concrete 
as  possible  ;  with  deaths  met  and  overcome  under 
conditions  of  mystery,  suspense,  trial  to  courage 
and  to  trust,  which  for  all  time  the  heart  of  man 
can  apprehend  in  their  solenmity.  Meanwhile, 
as  a  matter  of  diction  and  eloquence,  the  chapter 
carries  in  it  that  peculiar  charm  which  comes 
always  with  a  stately  enumeration.  It  has  often 
been  remarked  that  there  is  a  spell  in  the  mere 
recitation  of  names  by  a  master  of  verse : 

"Lancelot,  and  Pelleas,  and  Pellenore." 

Or  take  that  great  scene  in  Marmion,  where 
the  spectral  summons  is  pealed  from  Edinburgh 
Cross : 

"Then  tliunder'd  forth  a  roll  of  names; 
The  first  was  thine,  unhappy  James  ! 

Then  all  tliy  nobles  came  ; 
Crawford,  Glencaini,   Montrose,  Argyle, 
Ross,   Botliwell,  Forbes,   Lennox,  Lyle, 
Each  chief  of  birth  and  fume." 

And  the  consummate  prose  of  this  our  chapter 
moves  us  with  the  like  rhythmical  power  upon 


A  GREAT  SCRIPTURE  63 

the  spirit,  while  from  Abel  and  Enoch  onwards 
we  hear  recited,  name  by  name,  the  ancestors  of 
the  undying  family  of  faith.  No  wonder  that 
the  chapter  should  have  inspired  to  utterances 
formed  in  its  own  style  the  Christian  eloquence 
of  later  days,  as  in  that  noble  closing  passage 
of  Julius  Hare's  Victory  of  Faith,  where  he  carries 
on  the  record  through  the  apostolic  age,  and  the 
early  persecutions,  and  the  times  of  the  Fathers, 
to  Wilfrid  and  Bernard,  the  Waldenses,  Wiclif, 
Luther,  Latimer,  down  to  Oberlin,  and  Simeon, 
"  and  Howard,  and  Neff,  and  Henry  Martyn." 

So  we  approach  the  chapter,  familiar  as  it  is 
(and  it  is  so  familiar  because  it  is  so  great),  with 
a  peculiar  and  reverent  expectation.  We  look 
forward  to  another  visit  to  this  great  gallery  of 
"  the  portraits  of  the  family  of  God "  with  a 
pleasure  as  natural  as  it  is  reverent  and  believ- 
ing. True  to  our  plan  in  these  expositions, 
however,  we  shall  not  attempt  to  comment 
upon  it  in  the  least  degree  fully  or  in  detail. 
Our  aim  will  be  rather  to  collect  and  focus 
together  some  main  elements  of  its  teaching, 
particularly  in  regard  of  their  applicability  to 
our  own  days. 

The  first  question  suggested  as  we  read  is, 
what  is  the  connexion  of  the  chapter  ?  Why 
does  the  Writer  spend  all  this  wealth  of  example 
and  application  upon  the  one  word  Faith  ? 


64  FAITH  AND  ITS  POWER 

The  reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  tenth 
chapter  closes  with  that  word,  or  rather  with 
that  truth :  "  My  righteous  man  shall  live  by 
faith " ;  "  we  are  of  them  that  have  faith,  unto 
the  saving  of  the  soul."  And  this  close  is  only 
the  issue  of  a  strain  of  previous  teachings,  going 
far  back  towards  the  opening  of  the  Epistle. 
"  The  evil  heart  of  unbelief,"  of  "  unfaith,"  if  the 
word  may  be  used,  is  the  theme  of  warning  in 
iii.  12:"  They  could  not  enter  in  because  of 
unbelief"  (iii.  19).  "The  word  of  hearing  did 
not  profit  them "  because  of  their  lack  of  faith 
(iv.  2).  It  is  "  we  who  have  believed "  who 
"  enter  into  God's  rest "  (iv.  3).  Looking  to  our 
great  High  Priest  and  His  finished  work,  we  are 
to  "  draw  near  with  a  true  heart,  in  fulness  of 
faith"  (x.  22),  for  the  all-sufficient  reason  that 
such  trust  meets  and  appropriates  eternal  truth : 
"He  is  faithful  that  promised"  (x.  23). 

These  explicit  occasional  mentions  of  faith  are, 
however,  as  we  might  expect,  only  a  part  of  the 
phenomenon  of  the  great  place  which  the  idea  of 
faith  holds  in  the  Epistle.  When  we  come  to 
reflect  upon  it,  the  precise  position  of  the  Hebrew 
Christians  was  that  of  men  seriously,  even  tre- 
mendously, tempted  to  walk  by  sight,  not  by  faith. 
The  Gospel  called  them  to  venture  theii'  all,  for 
time  and  eternity,  upon  an  invisible  Person,  an  in- 
visible order,  a  mediation  carried  on  above  the 


THE  HEBREWS'  TRIAL  OF  FAITH     65 

skies,  a  presentation  of  sacrifice  made  in  a  temple 
infinitely  other  than  that  of  Mount  Moriah,  and 
a  kingdom  which,  as  to  all  outward  appearance, 
belonged  to  a  future  quite  isolated  from  the 
present.  On  the  other  hand,  so  they  were  told 
by  their  friends,  and  so  it  was  perfectly  natural 
to  them  to  think,  the  vast  visible  institutions  of 
the  Law  were  the  very  truth  of  God  for  their 
salvation,  and  those  institutions  appealed  to  them 
through  every  sense.  Why  should  they  forsake 
a  creed  which  unquestionably  connected  itself 
with  Divine  action  and  revelation  in  the  past, 
and  wliicli  presented  itself  actually  to  them 
under  the  embodiment  of  a  widespread  but 
coherent  nation,  all  descended  from  Abraliam 
and  Israel,  and  of  a  glorious  "  city  of  solenmities," 
and  of  a  temple  which  was  itself  a  wonder  of 
the  world,  and  of  which  every  detail  was 
"  according  to  a  pattern "  of  Divine  purpose, 
and  in  which  all  the  worship,  all  the  ritual, 
done  at  the  altars  and  within  the  veil,  was  great 
with  tlie  majesty  of  Divine  prescription  ?  There 
the  pious  Israelite  could  behold  one  vast  sacra- 
mental symbol  of  Jehovah's  life,  glory,  and 
faithfulness.  And  the  living  priesthood  that 
ministered  there,  in  all  its  courses  and  orders, 
was  one  large,  accessible  organ  of  personal 
witness  to  the  blessings  assured  to  the  faithful 
"  child  of  the  Law." 

5 


66  FAITH   AND   ITS  POWER 

It  demands  an  effort — and  it  well  deserves  an 
effort — to  realize  in  some  measure  what  the 
trial  must  have  been  for  the  sensitive  mind  of 
many  a  Jewish  convert  to  look  thus  from  the 
Gospel  to  the  Law  as  both  shewed  themselves  to 
him  then.  Even  now  the  earnest  and  religious 
Jew,  invited  to  accept  the  faith  of  Jesus,  has  his 
tremendous  difficulties  of  thought,  as  we  well 
know,  althougli  for  so  many  ages  Jerusalem  has 
been  "  trodden  down,"  and  the  priesthood  and 
sacrifices  have  become  very  ancient  history. 
But  when  our  Epistle  was  written  it  was  far 
otherwise.  True,  the  great  ruin  of  the  old  order 
was  very  near  at  hand,  but  not  to  the  common 
eye  and  mind.  It  may  be — for  all  things  are 
possible — that  the  Papal  system  may  be  near 
its  period ;  but  certainly  there  is  little  look  of  it 
to  the  traveller  who  visits  Eome  and  contem- 
plates St.  Peter's  and  the  Vatican.  As  little  did 
the  end  of  the  Mosaic  age  present  itself  as 
probable,  judging  by  externals,  to  the  pilgrim  to 
Jerusalem  then,  when,  for  example,  the  innumer- 
able hosts  of  Passover-keepers  filled  the  whole 
environs  of  the  city,  and  moved  incessantly 
through  the  vast  courts  around  the  sacred  space 
where  the  great  altar  sent  up  its  smoke  morning 
and  evening,  and  where  the  wonderful  House 
stood  intact,  "  a  mountain  of  snow  pinnacled 
with  gold." 


A  CONTRAST  OF  CLAIMS         6^ 

Think  of  the  contrast  between  such  historic 
invitations  to  "  walk  by  sight "  towards  the 
bosom  of  Abraham,  and  the  call  to  "  come  out 
and  be  separate "  in  some  Christian  upper-room, 
devoid  of  every  semblance  of  decorative  art  and 
dignified  proportion,  only  to  listen  to  the  Word, 
to  pray  and  praise  in  the  name  of  the  Crucified, 
and  to  eat  and  drink  at  the  simple  Eucharist, 
the  rite  of  Thanksgiving  for  —  the  Master's 
awful  death  ! 

liccollecting  these  facts  of  the  position,  it  is 
no  wonder  that  the  Writer  emphasizes  tlie 
greatness  and  glory  of  faith,  and  that  now  he 
devotes  this  whole  noble  and  extended  chapter 
to  illustrate  that  glory. 

We  come  thus  to  the  opening  words  of  the 
passage,  and  listen  to  him  as  he  takes  the 
word  "  faith "  up,  and  sets  it  apart,  to  look 
afresh  at  its  significance  and  to  describe  its 
potency,  before  he  proceeds,  with  the  tact 
and  skill  of  sympathy,  to  illustrate  his  account 
of  it  from  the  history  so  deeply  sacred  to  the 
tried  Hebrew  Christian's  heart. 

"  Now  faith  is  tlie  assurance  of  things  hoped 
for,  the  proving  of  things  not  seen."  So  the 
Revisers  translate  tlie  first  verse.  They  place  in 
their  margin,  as  an  alternative,  a  rendering  which 
makes  faith  to  be  "  the  giving  substance  to  things 
hoped  for,  the  test  of  things  not  seen."     I  pre- 


68  FAITH  AND   ITS  POWER 

sume  to  think  that  the  margin  is  preferable  as 
a  representation  of  the  first  clause  in  the  Greek, 
and  the  text  as  a  representation  of  the  second. 
So  I  would  render  (with  the  one  further  variation, 
in  view  of  the  Greek,  that  I  dispense  with  the 
definite  article) :  "  Now  faith  is  a  giving  of  sub- 
stance to  things  hoped  for,  a  demonstration  of 
things  not  seen."  And  we  may  paraphrase  this 
rendering  somewhat  thus :  "  Faith  is  that  by 
which  the  hoped-for  becomes  to  us  as  if  visible 
and  tangible,  and  by  which  the  unseen  is  taken 
and  treated  as  proven  in  its  verity."  * 

In  the  light  of  what  we  have  recalled  regard- 
ing the  position  of  the  first  readers  of  the  words, 
we  have  only  to  render  them  thus  to  see  their 
perfect  appropriateness,  their  adjustment  to  an 
"  exceeding  need."  The  Gospel  led  its  disciple 
supremely  and  ultimately  always  towards  the 
hoped-for  and  the  unseen.  True,  it  had  a 
reference  of  untold  value  and  power  to  the  seen 
and  present.       There  was    tlieu,  as  there  is  in 

*  A  friend  has  pointed  out  to  nic  that  in  the  recently 
discovered  papyri,  which,  although  a  relatively  small  part  of 
them  only  has  been  read  as  yet,  have  thrown  much  deeply  in- 
teresting light  on  the  character  and  vocabulary  of  Greek  as  used 
by  the  New  Testament  writers,  the  word  VTrdaTaci^  is  fouml 
with  the  meaning  of  "  title-deeds."  On  the  hypothesis  of  such 
a  meaning  here  (we  can  only  speak  with  reserve),  we  may 
paraphrase:  "  Faith  enables  us  to  treat  things  hoped  for  as  u 
property  of  which  we  hold  the  deeds." 


THE  GOSPEL  AND  THIS   LIFE     69 

our  day,  nothing  like  the  Gospel  to  transfigure 
character,  on  the  spot,  here  and  now,  and  thus 
to  transfigure  the  scene  and  the  persons  around 
the  man,  before  his  eyes,  within  reach  of  his 
hands,  in  the  wliole  intercourse  of  his  life,  by 
giving  them  all  a  new  and  wonderful  yet  most 
practical  importance  through  the  Lord's  relation 
to  them  and  to  him.  But  it  does  this  always 
and  inevitably  in  the  power  and  in  the  light  of 
facts  which  are  out  of  siglit  now,  and  of  prospects 
essentially  bound  up  witli  "  the  life  of  the  world 
to  come."  The  most  diligent  and  sensible 
worker  in  Christian  philanthropy,  if  lie  is  fully 
Christian  in  his  idea  and  action,  does  what  he 
does  so  well  for  the  relief  of  the  oppressed,  or 
for  the  civili>cation  of  the  degraded,  because  at 
the  heart  of  his  useful  life  he  spiritually  knows 
"  Him  that  is  invisible,"  and  is  animated  by  the 
thought  that  he  works  for  beings  capable,  after 
this  life's  discipline,  of  "  enjoying  Him  fully  for 
ever."  He  labours  for  man,  man  on  earth, 
because  he  loves  God  in  heaven,  and  because  he 
believes  that  God  made  man  and  redeemed  man 
for  an  immortality  to  which  time  is  only  tlie  short 
while  all-important  avenue.  In  the  calmest 
and  most  normal  Christian  periods,  accordingly, 
for  the  least  perilous  and  heroic  forms  of  faithful 
Christian  service,  it  is  vital  to  remember  that 
attitude  and  action  of  the  soul  which  we  call 


70  FAITH  AND  ITS  POWER 

faith.  For  faith  is  essential  both  to  the 
victories  and  the  utilities  of  the  Christian  life, 
just  so  far  as  that  life  touches  always  at  its 
living  spring  "  things  hoped  for,"  "  things  not 
seen."  And  at  a  time  like  that  of  the  first 
readers  of  the  Epistle  every  such  necessity  was 
enhanced  indefinitely,  both  by  the  perils  and 
threatenings  which  they  had  to  face  and  by  the 
majestic  illusion  to  which  they  were  continually 
exposed — the  illusion  under  which  the  order  of 
the  Law,  because  it  was  Divine  in  origin  and 
magnificent  in  its  visible  embodiment,  looked  as 
if  it  must  be  the  permanent,  the  final,  phase  of 
sacred  truth  and  life  on  earth. 

In  our  next  chapter  we  will  consider  both 
the  account  of  faith  here  given  and  some  main 
points  in  the  illustration  of  it  by  examples. 


CHAPTER   IX 
FAITH   AND   ITS   ANNALS 

Heb.  xi.  (II.) 

WE  considered  in  the  last  chapter  the  account 
of  Faith  with  which  the  apostolic  Writer 
opens  this  great  recital  of  the  "  life,  work,  and 
triumph  of  faith"  in  holy  human  lives.  His  words, 
as  we  found,  lend  themselves  to  some  variety  of 
explanation  in  detail :  the  term  v7r6(TTacn<;  alone 
may  be  interpreted  in  at  least  three  ways.  But 
I  do  not  think  that  this  need  disturb  us  as  to 
the  essential  meaning  of  the  description.  Each 
and  all  of  the  renderings  leave  us  with  the  thought 
that  faith  has  a  power  in  it  to  make  the  thing 
hoped-for  act  upon  us  as  if  it  were  attained,  and 
the  invisible  as  if  it  were  before  our  eyes. 

We  may  pause  so  far  further  over  the 
description  of  faith  here  as  to  point  out  that  it 
is  precisely  this,  a  description,  not  a  definition. 
To  quote  Heb.  xi.  1  as  a  good  definition  of  faith 
is  to  mistake  its  import  altogether.  I  have 
often  recalled,  in  speech  or  writing,  a  story  told 


72         FAITH   AND   ITS  ANNALS 

me  forty  years  ago  by  an  Oxford  friend  when  we 
were  masters  together  at  a  public  school.  He 
had  attended  a  Greek  Testament  lecture  at  his 
college  a  few  years  before,  and  the  lecturer  one 
day  asked  the  class  for  a  definition  of  faith. 
Some  one  quoted  Heb.  xi.  1,  and  the  lecturer's 
answer  was,  "  You  could  not  have  given  a  worse 
definition."  My  old  friend,  a  "  broad  "  but  most 
reverent  Churchman,  referred  to  this  as  an 
instance  of  painful  flippancy.  It  may  have 
been  so.  But  I  am  prepared  to  think  that  the 
lecturer  may  not  have  meant  it  so  at  all.  He 
may  only  have  expressed  rather  crudely  his  view, 
the  right  view,  to  my  mind,  that  we  have  here 
not  a  definition  of  faith  at  all  but  a  description 
of  faith  as  an  operative  force,  an  account  of  what 
faith  looks  like  when  it  is  at  work ;  and  this  is 
a  very  different  matter. 

What  is  a  definition  ?  A  precise  and  ex- 
clusive statement  of  the  essentials  of  a  thing,  such 
that  it  will  fit  no  other  thing.  A  description 
may  be  something  altogether  different  from  this. 
It  may  so  handle  the  object  that  the  terms  are 
not  exclusive  at  all,  but  are  equally  applicable 
to  something  else ;  as  here  for  example,  where 
the  phraseology  would  equally  well  describe 
imagination  in  its  more  vivid  forms — a  thing  as 
different  as  possible  from  faith.  To  be  quite 
practical,  we  have    here,  if  we  read    this    first 


DESCRIPTION  NOT  DEFINITION      73 

verse  in  the  light  of  the  whole  subsequent 
development  of  the  chapter,  a  description  of  faith 
at  work,  of  the  potency  and  victories  of  faith, 
rather  than  a  definition  of  faith  in  its  distinctive 
essence.  A  true  parallel  to  this  passage  is  the 
familiar  sentence,  "  Knowledge  is  power."  Those 
words  do  not  define  knowledge,  obviously ;  to  do 
that  would  demand  a  totally  different  phrase. 
What  the  words  do  is  to  give  us  one  great 
resultant  of  knowledge ;  to  tell  us  that  the 
possession  and  use  of  knowledge  endows  the  man 
who  knows  with  a  force  and  efficiency  which  he 
would  lack  without  it.  Few  words  are  more 
elastic  and  adaptable  than  the  verb  sub- 
stantive. "  Is "  can  denote  a  wide  variety  of 
ideas,  from  that  of  personal  identity,  as  when  I 
see  that  yonder  distant  figure  is  my  brother ; 
to  that  of  equivalence,  as  when  a  stamped  and 
signed  piece  of  thin  paper  called  a  bank-note  is 
five  pounds  of  gold ;  or  to  that  of  mere  repre- 
sentation, as  when  another  piece  of  paper,  or  a 
sheet  of  canvas,  duly  lined  and  coloured  by  the 
artist  to  show  the  semblance  of  a  human  face,  is 
the  King,  or  is  my  father ;  or  to  that  of  result 
and  effect,  as  when  we  say  that  knowledge  is 
power,  or  that  seeing  is  believing.* 

*  It  is  obvious  that  these  elementary  reflections  have  every- 
thing to  do  with  the  need  of  caution  in  explaining  those  most 
sacred  words,  "This  is  my  body  which  is  given  for  you." 


74         FAITH   AND   ITS  ANNALS 

Here  we  have  precisely  that  last  application 
of  the  verb  substantive,  only  in  an  exact  and 
most  noble  antithesis.  "  Seeing  is  believing," 
says  the  familiar  proverb.  "  Believing  is  seeing," 
says  the  Divine  word  here.  That  is  to  say, 
when  the  human  soul  so  relies  upon  God  that 
His  word  is  absolute  and  sufficient  for  its 
certainties,  this  reliance,  this  faith,  has  in  it 
the  potency  of  sight.  It  is  as  sure  of  the 
promised  blessing  as  if  it  were  a  present 
possession.  It  is  as  ready  to  act  upon  "  the 
things  not  seen  as  yet,"  the  laws,  powers,  hopes 
beyond  the  veil,  as  if  all  was  in  open  view 
to  the  eyes  of  the  body. 

The  whole  course  of  the  chapter,  when  it 
comes  down  to  particulars  and  persons,  bears 
this  out.  From  first  to  last  the  message  carried 
to  us  by  the  lives  and  actions  of  the  faithful  is 
this,  that  they  took  their  Lord  at  His  word, 
simply  as  His  word,  and  in  the  power  of  that 
reliance  found  themselves  able  to  act  as  if  the 
unseen  were  seen  and  the  hoped-for  were  present. 
"  The  elders  "  (ver.  2)  are  in  view  from  the  first 
— that  is  to  say,  the  pre-Christian  saints,  who 
were  in  that  sense  distinctively  men  who  proved 
the  power  of  faith,  that  they  all  lived  and  died 
before  the  visible  fulfilment  of  the  great  promise 
of  salvation.  To  them,  to  be  sure,  or  rather  to 
many  of  them,  not  to  all,  merciful  helps  were 


THE  ELDERS  75 

granted.  The  unseen  and  the  hoped-for  was 
sometimes,  not  always,  made  more  tangible  to 
them  by  the  grant  of  some  sign  and  token,  some 
portent  or  miracle,  by  the  way.  But  the  careful 
Bible-reader  knows  how  very  little  such  things 
are  represented  in  the  holy  histories  as  being 
the  "  daily  bread  "  of  the  life  of  the  old  believers. 
Even  in  the  lives  where  they  occur  most  often 
they  come  at  long  and  difficult  intervals,  and 
in  some  lives  not  at  all,  or  hardly  at  all.  And 
assuredly  we  gather  here  that,  to  the  mind  of 
the  apostolic  Writer,  no  experience  of  miracles, 
no  permission  even  to  hold  direct  colloquy  with 
the  Eternal,  ever  made  up  for  that  immeasurable 
"  aid  to  faith "  which  we  enjoy  who  know  the 
Incarnate  Son  as  fact,  and  walk  on  an  earth 
which  has  seen  the  God-Man  traverse  it,  and 
die  upon  it,  and  rise  again. 

These  "  elders "  were  men  called  to  live,  in 
an  eminent  and  most  trying  degree,  not  by 
sight  but  by  faith,  by  mere  reliance  upon  a 
Promiser.  Therefore  their  living  witness  to 
the  capacity  of  faith  to  make  the  unseen  visible 
and  the  hoped-for  present  is  the  more  precious 
to  us.  We,  with  the  Christ  of  God  manifested 
to  us,  displayed  in  history,  experienced  in  the 
heart — what  are  not  we  to  find  the  power  of 
faith  to  be  in  our  lives,  having,  for  our  supreme 
seal  upon  faith,  the  promise  fulfilled,  the  Image 


^6         FAITH  AND   ITS  ANNALS 

of  the  Invisible  God,  made  one  with  our  nature 
and  dwelling  in  our  hearts  ? 

One  partial  exception,  and  only  one,  to  this 
great  ruling  lesson  of  the  chapter  is  to  be 
noted ;  it  occurs  in  the  second  verse.  There 
"  by  faith  we  perceive  that  the  worlds,"  the 
(Bon^,  the  dispensations  and  evolutions  of  created 
being,  "  have  been  framed,"  perfected,  adjusted 
to  one  another,  "  by  the  Word  of  God,  so  that 
not  from  things  which  appear  has  that  which 
is  seen  originated."  These  words  appear  to  be 
inserted  where  they  stand  in  order,  so  to  speak, 
to  carry  the  sequence  of  the  references  to  the 
Old  Testament  down  from  its  very  first  page. 
The  work  of  faith  has  exercise  in  face  of  the 
mysterious  narrative  of  Creation,  and  in  this 
one  instance  the  exercise  is  quoted  as  what 
concerns  us  now  quite  as  much  as  "  the  elders." 
They  like  us,  we  like  them,  get  our  guarantee 
as  to  the  facts  of  the  primal  past  not  by  sight 
but  by  faith,  by  taking  God  at  His  word.  He, 
in  His  revelation,  tells  us  that  "  in  the  be- 
ginning " — the  beginning  of  whatever  existence 
is  other  than  eternal — "  God  created."  Things 
finite,  things  visible,  came  into  original  being 
not  as  evolved  from  previous  similar  material, 
but  as  of  His  will. 

But  when  that  pregnant  side-word  has  once 
been  said,  the  argument  settles  itself  forthwith 


THE  ELDERS  AND  THEIR  FAITH     ^^ 

upon  the  recorded  examples  of  the   potency  of 
faith  as  "  the  elders  "  exercised  it.     We  see  man 
after  man  enabled  to  treat  the  invisible  as  visible, 
the  promised  as  present,  by  reliant  rest  upon  the 
word  of  God,  however  conveyed.     To  Abel,  we 
know  not    how,  it  was    divinely    said   that  the 
sacrificed  "  firstling  "  was  the  acceptable  oflering, 
and,  antecedent  to  any  possible    experience,  he 
offered    it.      To    Enoch,    we    know    not   how,  it 
was  made  known  that  the  Eternal,  as  invisible 
to  him    as    to  us,  cared  for   man's  worshipping 
company,  and  he  addressed  himself  tlirougli  his 
age-long  life    to  "  walk  with  God."     Noah  was 
apprised,    for    the    first    time    in    man's    known 
history,  of  an  approaching  cataclysm  and  of  the 
way  of  escape  ;  the  promise  came  to  him  wrapped 
in  the  cloud  of  an  awful  warning,  and   it  was 
long  delayed,  but  he  acted  upon  it  in  the  steady 
energy  of  faith.      Abraham  was  "  called,"  we  know 
not  precisely  how,  but  in  some  way  which  tested 
his  reliance  on  things  "  not  seen  as  yet,"  and  he 
set   out   on    that   wonderful   life   of    a  hundred 
years  of  faith.     He  renounced  the  settled  habits 
and  old  civilization  of  Chaldea  for  the   new  life 
of  a    Syrian    nomad,  "  settling   permanently   in 
tents  "   (eV  a-Kr]uat<;  Karot,K7]aa<;),  he  and  his  son 
and  his  grandson  after  him,  all  in  view  of  an 
invisible    future    made    visible    by    the    trusted 
promise,  a  future  culminating  at  last  to  his  "  eye 


78         FAITH   AND   ITS  ANNALS 

of  faith,"  so  here  we  are  solemnly  assured,  in 
the  city  of  the  saints,  in  the  Canaan  of  the 
heavens.  The  same  reliance  on  the  sheer  word 
of  promise  nerved  him  to  the  awful  ordeal  of  the 
ail-but  immolation  of  his  son.  And  that  son 
in  his  turn,  against  all  appearances,  and  rather 
bowing  to  the  Word  of  God  than  embracing  it, 
blessed  his  least-loved  son  above  his  dearest ; 
and  that  son  in  his  turn,  and  his  son  in  his  turn, 
carried  the  process  on,  treating  the  greatness  of 
Ephraim  and  the  deliverance  from  Egypt  as 
things  seen  and  present,  because  God  had  so 
spoken.  The  parents  of  Moses,  and  then  Moses 
himself,  in  his  strange  life  of  disappointments 
and  wonders,  deal  likewise  with  the  future,  the 
unseen,  the  seemingly  impossible,  on  the  warrant 
of  a  promise.  Figures  as  little  heroic  in  natural 
character  as  Sarah,  as  little  noble  in  life  as 
Eahab,  take  place  in  the  long  procession,  as 
those  who  treat  the  invisible  as  visible  by  faith. 
So  do  the  thronging  "  elders "  of  ver.  3  2 — a 
group  singularly  diverse  in  everything  but  this 
victory  over  the  seen  and  present  by  faith  in 
the  promise.  So  do  the  unnamed  confessors  and 
martyrs  of  the  closing  paragraph,  the  heart- 
broken, the  tortured,  the  wanderers  of  the  dens 
and  caves,  who  all  alike,  amidst  a  thousand 
differences  of  condition  and  of  character,  "  ob- 
tained  a   good   report   through   faith " ;  and  all 


THE  ELDERS  AND  THEIR  FAITH     79 

won  through  faith  that  victory,  so  great  when 
we  reflect  upon  it — that  they  died  "  not  having 
received  the  promise."  They  trusted  to  the  very 
end.  When  they  sank  down  in  death  upon 
their  shadowy  path  of  pilgrimage,  "  the  promise," 
the  promised  Christ,  had  not  yet  come.  Never- 
theless they  treated  the  hope  of  Him  as  fact, 
and  they  won  their  victory  by  faith. 

And  now  they  are  parts  and  members  of  the 
"  great  cloud  "  who  watch  us  in  our  turn — us, 
with  things  unseen  and  hoped-for  still  in  front, 
but  with  Jesus  at  our  side. 


CHAPTER  X 
FOLLOWERS   OF  THEM 

Hkb.  xii.  1-14 

THE  Epistle  approaches  its  close.  The  Writer 
has  much  yet  to  say  to  the  disciples  upon 
many  things,  all  connected  with  that  main 
interest  of  their  lives,  a  resolute  fidelity  to  the 
Lord,  to  the  Gospel,  and  to  one  another.  But 
he  has  not  yet  quite  done  with  that  side  of  their 
"  exceeding  need "  to  which  the  antidote  is  the 
faith  which  can  deal  with  the  future  as  the 
present,  with  the  unseen  as  the  seen.  Upon 
this  theme,  from  one  aspect  or  another,  is  spent 
the  passage  now  before  us. 

First,  the  appeal  is  to  the  recollection  that 
the  combat,  the  race,  the  victory  of  faith,  as  it 
was  for  the  Hebrew  believers,  "  the  contest  set 
before  ns"  (ver.  1),  not  only  had  been  fought 
and  won  before  them  by  the  saints  of  the  old 
time,  but  that  those  saints  were  now,  from 
their  blessed  rest,  as  "  spirits  of  the  just  made 
perfect"  (ver.  23),  watchers    and    witnesses    of 

8o 


THE  WITNESSES  8i 

their  successors'  course.  "  We  have,  lying 
around  us,  so  great  a  cloud  of  witnesses " 
(ver.  1).  "We"  are  running,  like  the  com- 
petitors in  the  Hellenic  stadium,  in  the  public 
view  of  a  mighty  concourse,  so  vast,  so  aggre- 
gated, so  placed  aloft,  that  no  word  less  great 
than  "  cloud "  occurs  as  its  designation :  that 
"  long  cloud "  as  it  is  finely  called  in  Isaac 
Watts'  noble  hymn,  "  Give  me  the  wings  of 
faith."  True,  the  multitudinous  watchers  are 
unseen,  but  this  only  gives  faith  another 
opportunity  of  exercise ;  we  are  to  treat  the 
Blessed  as  seen,  for  we  know  that  they  are  there, 
living  to  God,  one  with  us,  fellows  of  our  life 
and  love.  So  let  us  address  ourselves  afresh  to 
the  spiritual  race,  the  course  of  faith.  Let  us, 
as  athletes  of  the  soul,  strip  all  encumbrance 
off,  "  every  weight "  of  allowed  wrong,  all  guilty 
links  with  the  world  of  rebellion  and  self-love  ; 
"  the  sin  which  doth  so  easily  beset  us,"  cling- 
ing so  soon  around  the  feet,  like  a  net  of  fine 
but  stubborn  meshes,  till  the  runner  gives  up 
the  hopeless  effort  and  is  lost.* 

I    thus    explain    the    "  witnesses "    to    mean 
spectators,    watchers,    not    testifiers.     The    con- 

*  I  cannot  think  possible  the  alternative  (marginal)  render- 
ing of  €VTr fpiffTarov  in  the  Revised  Version  —  "admired  by 
many."  There  is  example  for  the  meaning  in  classical  Greek, 
but  the  idea  is  totally  out  of  keeping  with  the  spirit  of  this 
passage. 

6 


82  FOLLOWERS  OF  THEM 

text  seems  to  me  to  decide  somewhat  positively 
for  this  explanation.  It  is  an  altogether 
pictorial  context ;  the  imagery  of  the  foot-race 
comes  suddenly  up,  and  in  a  moment  raises 
before  us  the  vision  of  the  stadium  and  its 
surroundings.  The  reader  cannot  see  the  course 
with  his  inner  eyes  without  also  seeing  those 
hosts  of  eager  lookers-on  which  made,  on  every 
such  occasion,  in  the  old  world  as  now,  the  life 
of  the  hour.  In  such  a  context  nothing  but 
explicit  and  positive  reasons  to  the  contrary 
could  give  to  the  word  "  witnesses,"  and  to  tlie 
word  "  cloud "  in  connexion  with  it,  any  other 
allusion.  True,  these  watchers  are  all,  as  a  fact, 
evidential  "  witnesses "  also,  testifiers  to  the 
infinite  benefit  and  success  of  the  race  of  faith. 
But  that  thought  lies  almost  hidden  behind  the 
other.  It  is  as  loving,  sympathetic,  inspiring 
lookers-on  that  the  old  saints,  from  Abel  on- 
wards, are  here  seen  gathered,  thronging  and 
intent,  around  us  as  we  run. 

The  conception  runs  off  of  course  into 
mystery,  as  every  possible  conception  about  the 
unseen  docs,  even  when  Scripture  is  most 
explicit  about  unseen  facts.  We  ask,  and  ask 
in  vain,  what  is  the  medium  through  which 
these  observers  watch  us,  the  air  and  light,  as  it 
were,  in  which  their  vision  acts ;  what  is  their 
proximity  to  us  all  the  while ;  to  what  extent 


AN   INSPIRING  REVELATION      83 

they  are  able  to  know  the  entire  conditions  of 
our  race.  But  all  this  leaves  faith  in  peaceful 
possession  of  a  fact  of  unspeakable  animation. 
It  tells  the  discouraged  or  tired  Christian, 
tempted  to  think  of  the  unseen  as  a  dark 
void,  that  it  is  rather  a  bright  and  populous 
world,  in  mysterious  touch  and  continuity  with 
this,  and  that  our  forerunners,  from  those 
of  tlie  remotest  past  down  to  the  last-called 
beloved  one  who  has  passed  out  of  our 
sight,  know  enough  about  us  to  mark  our 
advance  and  to  prepare  their  welcome  at  the 
goal. 

In  that  rich  treasury  of  sacred  song,  Hymns 
from  the  Land  of  Luther,  is  included  the  trans- 
lation of  a  noble  hymn  by  Simon  Dach,  0  wie 
sclig  seid  ihr  doch,  ihr  Frommen,  "  0  how  happy 
arc  ye,  saints  forgiven."  That  hymn  beautifully 
illustrates  this  verse.  It  is  written  rcsponsively 
all  through.  One  stanza,  sung  upward,  is  the 
utterance  from  below  of  the  pilgrim  Church, 
longing  for  her  rest.  The  next,  sung  from 
above,  is  the  answer  of  the  Blessed,  telling  of 
their  love  and  sympathy,  taught  them  by  their 
own  similar  sufferings,  of  their  bright  forevicw 
of  tlie  celestial  crown  reserved  for  their  still 
toiling  brethren.  So  the  two  choirs  answer  each 
other,  turn  by  turn,  till  at  last  both  join  in  a 
glorious  concert  of  blended  song,  a  closing  strain 


84  FOLLOWERS  OF  THEM 

of    faith  aud  praise.      Let    us    listen   often    for 
those  answers  from  above. 

But  the  holy  Writer  has  more  to  say  yet 
about  the  motives  to  faith.  He  points  the 
weary  saints  upward,  even  beyond  the  "  cloud," 
to  a  Form  radiant  and  supreme.  They  are  to 
run,  conscious  of  the  witnesses,  but  yet  more 
intently  "  looking  off  (atpopwvre'i)  unto  Jesus, 
the  supreme  Leader  (ap-xriyov)  and  Perfecter  of 
faith "  ;  that  is  to  say,  the  Lord  of  the  whole 
host  of  the  believing,  and  Himself  the  consum- 
mate Worker  in  the  field  of  faith,  who,  for  a 
joy  promised  hut  not  seen,  "  endured  the  Cross," 
when  its  immediate  aspect  was  an  inexpressible 
outrage  and  disgrace ;  reaching  the  throne  of 
all  existence,  as  Son  of  Man,  in  spite  of  every 
possible  appearance  to  the  contrary  (ver.  2). 
Yes,  and  not  only  was  that  final  victory  thus  won 
by  Him,  but  He  arrived  at  it  1)y  a  path  full  of 
the  conflicts  which  threaten  faith.  He  "  endured 
the  contradiction  of  sinners  against  Himself " 
(ver.  3).  Year  by  year,  day  by  day,  from  the 
Pharisee,  from  the  worldling,  from  the  leaders 
of  religion,  from  the  inconstant  crowd.  He  had 
"  contradiction  "  to  endure — sometimes  even  from 
"  the  men  of  His  own  household."  He  was 
challenged  to  prove  His  claims ;  He  was  insulted 
over  His  assertion  of  them,  or  over  His  silence 
about  them.     In  every  way,  at  every  turn,  they 


THE  SUPREME  BELIEVER        85 

spoke  against  Him  to  His  face,  as  He  slowly 
advanced,  through  a  life  of  love  and  suffering,  to 
the  Agony  and  the  Crucifixion. 

Let  us  not  think  that  all  this  put  no  strain, 
even  in  the  King  Messiah,  upon  faith.  It  may 
seem  scarcely  reverent  (I  know  devout  and 
thoughtful  Christians  who  have  felt  it  to  he 
so)  to  speak  of  our  blessed  Lord  as  exercising 
faith,  as  being  the  supreme  Believer.  But  we 
need  not  shrink  from  the  thought.  It  is  no  more 
irreverent,  surely,  than  to  accept  the  evidence 
of  the  Gospels  to  His  perfect  human  capacity 
to  be  weary,  to  be  surprised,  to  be  specially 
moved  to  compassion  by  the  sight  of  suffering. 
In  His  sinless  conformity  "  in  all  things  to  His 
brethren "  there  was  never  for  one  moment 
room  in  Him — of  this  we  may  be  amply  sure 
— for  error  of  thought  or  of  word,  as  He  acted 
as  the  supreme  and  absolute  Prophet  of  His 
Church.  But  there  was  room,  so  we  are  ex- 
pressly told,  on  one  tremendous  occasion  at 
least  (Matt.  xxvi.  37),  for  a  mysterious  "be- 
wilderment" {ahr]ixovelv)  of  His  blessed  human 
soul.  Can  we  doubt  that  the  victory  won  in 
the  Garden,  after  which  He  went  with  profound 
calmness  to  the  unjust  priest,  and  Pilate,  and 
the  Cross,  was  of  the  nature  of  a  victory  of 
faith  ?  Did  He  not  then  treat  the  coming  "  joy  " 
as  a  reality  although,  in  so  awful  a  sense  and 


86  FOLLOWERS  OF  THEM 

measure  He  did  not  "  feel "  it  then  ?  The  "  be- 
wilderment "  did  not  drive  Him  back  from  our 
redemption  ;  and  why  ?  Because  "  He  trusted 
in  God  that  He  would  deliver  Him  "  (Ps.  xxii.  9  ; 
Matt,  xxvii,  42),  whatever  should  be  the  con- 
tents of  "  the  cup "  from  which  His  whole 
humanity  turned  away  as  almost  impossible  to 
drink. 

And  may  we  not  be  sure  that  on  many  a 
previous  occasion  of  minor  and  yet  bitter  trial, 
when  evil  men  gathered  round  Him  with  cynical 
objections  and  ruthless  denials  of  His  claims, 
the  victory  was  akin  to  the  victory  of  Geth- 
semane  ?  Often,  surely,  a  strange  "  bewilder- 
ment "  must  have  beset  the  Redeemer's  soul,  of 
which  the  external  token  was  the  sigh,  the 
groan,  the  tears,  which  shewed  Him  to  be  so 
truly  Man. 

We  all  hold,  in  full  doctrinal  orthodoxy,  that 
the  Lord's  sufferings,  both  of  soul  and  body,  were 
no  "  docetic  "  semblance  but  a  deep  and  infinitely 
pathetic  reality.  But  we  need  at  times  to  think 
somewhat  deliberately  in  order  to  receive  the 
full  impression  of  that  truth  upon  the  heart. 
And  then  surely  we  are  constrained  to  see  in 
Him,  who  thus  really  suffered  and  really  "  en- 
dured," the  supreme  Exemplar  of  the  victory 
of  faith,  the  perfect  Sympathizer  with  the  tried 
believer. 


WHEN  COMES  THE  EVIL  DAY     87 

From  this  pregnant  thought,  of  the  faith 
exercised  by  Jesus,  the  disciple  is  directly  led 
in  the  remainder  of  our  passage  to  the  practical 
inferences  for  himself.  The  days,  for  those  first 
readers  of  the  Epistle,  were  indeed  evil.  Though 
not  yet  called  to  martyrdom  (ver.  4),  they  were 
hard  beset,  not  only  by  importunate  reasonings 
and  appeals  which,  as  we  have  seen  all  along, 
were  straining  their  spiritual  allegiance,  but  by 
actual  outrages  (see  e.g.  x.  34),  by  the  "  scourg- 
ing" (ver.  6)  of  bitter  social  persecution.  Well, 
"  looking  off  unto "  Him  who  had  so  greatly 
endured,  they  were,  in  these  things  also,  to  see 
the  unseen  and  to  presentiate  the  future.  From 
the  Proverbs  (iii.  11,  12),  that  book  where  the 
apostolic  insight  so  often  finds  the  purest 
spiritual  messages,'^  he  quotes  (verses  5,  6)  the 
tender  words  which  bid  the  chastened  child  see 
in  his  chastening  the  assurance  (ver.  8)  of  his 
happy,  holy  sonship  in  the  home  of  a  Father, 
"  the  Father  of  our  spirits,"  who,  unlike  our 
earthly  fathers  even  at  their  best  (and  that 
was  a  noble  best  indeed),  not  only  chastens,  but 
chastens  with  an  unerring  result  of  holiness  in 
the  submissive  child — yea,  a  holiness  which  is 
one  with  His  own  (ver.  10),  His  Spirit  in  our 
wills. 

*  It  was  evidently  a  book  dear  to  St.  Peter's  mind,  as  liis 
First  Epistle  shews. 


88  FOLLOWERS  OF  THEM 

Beautiful  is  the  sympathy  of  this  appeal  to 
live,  by  faith,  the  life  of  victorious  patience. 
"  All  chastening,  for  the  present,  seems  not  to 
belong  to  joy  but  grief"  (ver.  11).  Yes,  the 
immediate  pain  is  here  fully  recognized,  not 
ignored.  It  is  not  spoken  of  as  if,  in  view  of  its 
sequel,  it  did  not  matter.  "  It  belongs  to  grief." 
Scripture  is  full  of  this  tender  insight  into  the 
bitterness  of  even  our  salutary  sorrows,  and  its 
appeals  to  patience  are  all  the  more  potent  for 
that  insight.  "  Nevertheless,  afterward,  it  pro- 
duces the  peace-bringing  fruit  of  righteousness," 
the  sense  of  a  profound  inward  rest,  found  in 
conformity  to  the  "  sweet,  beloved  will  of  God," 
in  living  correspondence  to  the  Father's  rule, 
"  for  those  who  have  been  exercised,  as  in  a 
spiritual  gymnasium  (yeyvfjLvaa-fiivoi';),  thereby." 
That  "  exercise "  was  to  tell  at  once,  as  they 
surrendered  their  wills  to  it  in  faith,  in  a  present 
sense  of  the  certainty  of  future  blessing.  "  Brace 
the  slack  hands "  to  toil,  "  and  the  unstrung 
knees"  to  march  (ver.  12),  "and  make  straight 
paths  for  your  feet,"  using  your  will,  faith- 
strengthened,  to  choose  the  line  of  the  will  of 
God,  and  that  alone.  So  should  "  the  lame 
thing  "  be  "  healed  "  rather  than  "  turned  aside." 
The  walk,  feeble  and  halting  always  when  the 
will  is  divided,  should  be  restored  to  firmness 
and  certainty  again. 


AFTERWARD  89 

"Nevertheless,  afterward."  That  is  the 
watchword  of  the  whole  pregnant  passage. 
Nature,  shortsighted  and  impatient,  can  deal 
with  the  seen  and  the  present  only.  Grace, 
in  its  victorious  form  of  patient  faith,  already 
takes  hold  upon  the  "  afterward,"  and  works  on, 
and  walks  on,  "  as  seeing  Him  that  is  invisible." 

With  the  thought  of  the  witness-cloud  around 
us,  and  "looking  off"  to  the  Prince  of  Faith, 
ascended,  yet  present  with  us,  and  sure  of  the 
ultimate  and  eternal  "  fruit  of  righteousness " 
which  lies  hidden  in  the  chastening  of  the 
Father  of  our  spirits — we  too  will  live  by  faith, 
taking  God  at  His  word,  and  saying  Amen  to 
His  will,  even  to  the  end. 


CHAPTER  XI 
SINAI   AND   SION 

Heb.  xii.  14-28 

THE  paragraph  before  us  is  largely  concerned 
with  the  inner  life  of  the  believing  com- 
munity,  its  cohesion  member  with  member,  and 
the  call  to  each  member  and  to  all  to  "  walk 
warily  in  dangerous  days,"  in  the  path  of  evan- 
gelical holiness.  The  Writer  lays  it  upon  them 
(ver.  14)  to  "pursue  peace  with  all,"  such  peace 
as  always  tends,  even  in  bad  times,  to  reward 
the  "sons  of  peace,"  while  they  so  behave 
themselves  as  never  on  their  own  part  to  con- 
tribute a  factor  to  avoidable  strife,  and  while  the 
intiuence  of  their  meek  consistency  leavens  in 
some  measure  the  mass  around  them.  With 
equal  and  concurrent  care  they  are  to  "  pursue 
sanctification."  It  is  to  be  their  strong  ambition 
to  develope  and  deepen  incessantly  that  dedica- 
tion of  themselves  to  the  Holy  One  which  will 
give  them  at  once  the  standard  and  the  secret 

of    holiness,    by   bringing   them   into  immediate 

90 


WARNINGS  91 

contact  with  Him  who  is  at  once  their  law  and 
their  life.  They  are  to  "  live  out,"  in  the  spirit 
of  a  resolute  quest  after  fuller  and  yet  fuller 
attainment,  the  fact  that  He  has  redeemed  them 
to  be  "  a  people  of  His  own  possession " ;  re- 
membering, with  a  solemn  simplicity  of  con- 
viction, that  only  "  the  pure  in  heart "  shall 
ever  be  able  to  "  see  God."  For  the  spirit 
which  refuses  to  come  into  a  surrendered 
harmony  with  His  Spirit  might  be  set  in  the 
midst  of  heaven  itself,  yet  it  would  be  blind,  it 
would  be  blinded — by  that  alien  glory.  They  are 
to  keep  watch  and  oversight  upon  one  another 
(ver.  15),  mutually  observant  all  round,  to  see 
that  the  life  of  faith  and  love  is  alive  indeed. 
Does  any  one  find  his  fellow-believer  "  falling 
short  of  the  grace  of  God,"  sinking  into  conduct 
no  better  than  the  world's  ?  This  must  at  once 
disquiet  the  observer,  and  call  out  his  loving 
warnings,  or  at  least  his  anxious  intercessions ; 
for  the  declining  convert  inevitably  extends  an 
infiuence  of  decline  around  him,  and  the  issue 
will  be,  in  the  end,  a  declining  Churcli.  Is  "  any 
root  of  bitterness  growing  up  "  ?  Is  there  (see 
Deut.  xxix.  18)  any  Christian  in  the  company 
so  fallen,  so  "  embittered  "  by  alienation  from  his 
Lord,  as  to  be  a  cause  around  him  of  "  defile- 
ment," so  as  to  stain  ultimately  large  circles 
{ol  TToWol)  with  the  deep  pollution  of  a  practical 


92  SINAI   AND  SION 

apostasy  from  holiness  ?  Is  there  here  and  there 
a  personal  example  of  spiritual  infidelity  {iropvos:) 
to  the  Lord,  of  that  radically  "  secular  "  (/3€/3T)Xo<i) 
spirit  (ver.  IG)  of  which  Esau  is  the  type,  to 
which  some  "  mess  of  meat,"  some  material  ad- 
vantage, proves  overwhelmingly  more  momentous 
than  the  unworldly  "  birthright "  given  by  the 
promise  of  God  ?  Let  them  all  watch  as  for 
their  life  against  such  symptoms.  It  is  a  matter 
of  eternal  import.  The  ancient  Esau  found  too 
late  that  he  was  an  outcast,  irrevocably,  from  the 
great  blessing,  though  then  he  cried  for  it  with 
a  cry  great  and  bitter.  In  vain  he  asked  his 
father  to  reverse  the  destiny ;  there  was  no 
"  place  of  repentance  "  in  Isaac's  will,  for  Isaac 
knew  that  he  had  but  carried  out,  blind  as  he 
was,  the  will  of  God. 

Then  follows  (verses  18-24)  that  sublime 
antithesis  of  Sinai  and  Sion  which  forms  one  of 
the  greatest  examples  of  rhythmical,  of  almost 
lyrical,  eloquence  in  the  whole  New  Testament. 
On  the  one  hand  looms  on  the  view  the  Thing,* 
material,  tangible  {y^rfkajxcjievcc)),  all  on  fire, 
black  with  tempestuous  cloud,  its  echoes  pealing 
(ver,  19)  to  a  tremendous  trumpet-blast  and  then 
to  a  yet  more  awful  "  voice  of  words."     At  its 

*  The  word  6p(L  is  certainly  absent  from  the  true  text.  We 
are  left  as  in  presence  of  a  mysterious  somewhat,  a  mighty  mass, 
mantled  in  terror  and  without  form  or  name. 


THE  TWO  MOUNTAINS  93 

base  cowers  an  awe-struck,  horror-struck,  host  of 
men,  shuddering  at  the  warning  (vcr.  20)  not  to 
touch  the  fatal  rocks,  crowding  for  refuge  round 
a  leader  who  himself  owns  (ver.  21)  to  heart- 
shaking  fears.*  On  the  other  hand,  as  the  eyes 
of  faith  are  lifted,  there  shines  into  view,  and  in 
the  closest  spiritual  proximity  (for  the  believing 
company  has  actually  "come  unto  it,"  ver.  22), 
the  hill  eternal,  the  true  Mount  Sion,  where 
shines  the  city  of  the  living  God,  the  Jerusalem 
of  heaven.  No  barren  rocks  are  there,  nor  do 
menaces  of  articulate  thunder  sound  from  and 
around  that  height.  All  is  light,  and  all  is  life. 
Yes,  above  all  things  all  is  life.  Behold  the 
countless  thousands  {iivptdatv)  of  radiant  deni- 
zens, the  angelic  friends  of  man  ;  and  then  beati- 
fied men  besides  (ver.  23),  "festal  assembly  and 
church  of  the  first-born,  enrolled  in  heaven " ; 
the  Blessed  gone  before,  the  "great  cloud,"  seen 
now  in  their  other  character,  as  the  triumpliant 
throng  of  a  celestial  Passover,  or  of  a  Tabernacle- 
feast  of  palms,  kept  in  the  better  Canaan  to 
commemorate  the  mercies  of  the  mortal  wilder- 
ness. And  there,  centre  and  sun  of  the 
wonderful  scene,  is  the  glory  of  the  "Judge  of 
all,"  Vindicator  (so  we  read  the  meaning  of  the 
word  KpLTrj<i  here)  of  His  afflicted  ones,  treading 

*  A   traditional   utterance    must  1)C  referred   to.     But   the 
whole  narrative  in  Exodus  and  in  Deuteronomy  supports  it. 


94  SINAI   AND  SIGN 

down  their  enemies  and  presiding  in  majesty 
over  their  happy  estate.  Around  Him  rest  and 
rejoice  the  pure  "  spirits  of  the  just  made 
perfect,"  the  dear  and  holy  who  have  lately 
passed  through  death,  "  perfected  "  already,  even 
before  their  resurrection,  in  respect  of  the  course 
finished,  the  fight  fought,  the  faith  kept,  the 
trial  for  ever  over.  Lastly  (ver.  24),  the  form 
is  seen  of  the  more  than  Moses  of  this  better 
Mount  of  God.  Behold  the  Mediator,  not  of  the 
old  covenant  but  of  the  new,  the  Covenant  of 
the  Eternal  Spirit.  Behold  the  Surety  of  the 
promise  of  the  purified  heart,  the  promise  sealed 
witli  that  sprinkled  blood  of  the  Incarnate 
Lamb  which,  iu  Divine  antithesis  to  the  call 
for  vengeance  on  the  fratricide  which  went  up 
from  Abel's  death,  claims  for  the  "  brethren  "  who 
once  slew  their  Deliverer  not  remission  only  but 
holiness  and  heaven. 

It  is  a  wonderful  picture,  the  hill  of  the  awful 
Law  confronted  1)y  the  "hill  whence  cometh  our 
help."  And  we  ask  ourselves  why,  just  here  in 
the  Epistle,  it  is  painted  for  us  and  left  upon 
our  spirit's  eyes  for  ever.  Surely  it  is  that  the 
Hebrew  disciple  (and  we  in  our  turn  to-day) 
may  be  quickened  in  watching  and  in  walk- 
ing alike  by  an  immense  encouragement  and  a 
warning  of  corresponding  power.  The  call  has 
just  been  made,  all  through  the  twelfth  chapter 


BETWEEN  SINAI   AND  SION      95 

up  to  this  point,  to  endure,  to  watch,  to  warn 
each  other,  to  pursue  to  the  uttermost  the 
ambition  of  holiness.  Let  this  be  done  as  by 
tliose  whose  pilgrim  tents  are  pitched  as  it  were 
in  a  valley  between  those  two  mountains  of  God. 
Let  the  true  Israelite  turn  his  eyes  sometimes 
upon  Sinai,  to  learn  again  from  its  shadows  and 
its  thunders  the  infinite  importance  of  the  eternal 
Will,  the  awfulness  of  transgression,  the  terrors 
of  the  Law  when  its  demand  is  met  only  by  the 
miserable  failures  of  the  sinner.  Then,  humbled 
lower  than  the  dust,  let  him  turn  towards  the 
eternal  Sion,  and  not  only  turn  towards  it  but 
recollect  that  in  the  Spirit,  and  in  the  Son,  he 
has  "come  unto  it."  In  the  Lord  Christ,  his 
better  Moses,  his  saving  Mediator,  he  has  already 
arrived  beside  it  and  rests  upon  it.  No  voice 
of  thunder  bids  him  not  to  touch  it  "  lest  he  be 
thrust  through."  He  is  commanded  to  come  as 
near  to  it  as  it  is  possible  to  be,  because  he  is  to 
come  to  "  the  Lord  of  the  Hill "  Himself,  in  the 
absolute  proximity  of  faith,  love,  and  life.  He 
is  welcomed  to  its  recesses,  and  to  its  heights. 
The  first-born  are  his  brethren ;  the  just  made 
perfect  are  his  own  beloved  ;  every  angel  of  all 
the  host  is  his  friend  ;  the  supreme  Judge  is  his 
omnipotent  Protector  ;  Jesus  is  his  Peace,  through 
the  blood  of  His  Cross.  "  Blest  inhabitant  of 
Sion,  washed  in  the  Kedeemer's  blood  !  "    Shall  he 


96  SINAI   AND  SIGN 

not  address  himself  to  the  path  and  pursuit 
of  hohness  with  a  heart  beating  with  an  inex- 
haustible hope,  and  with  a  life  present  while 
eternal  ? 

Then,  as  the  great  paragraph  approaches  its 
climax,  the  note  of  warning  sounds  again 
(ver.  25).  The  convert,  fresh  from  the  reminder 
of  the  "  voice "  of  the  sprinkled  blood  of  the 
better  covenant,  is  cautioned  not  to  "  refuse  "  it, 
not  to  "  decline  "  it  (/Jir]  Trapairrja-TjaOe).  The 
primary  reference  is  manifestly  to  that  perpetual 
danger  of  the  Hebrews,  the  temptation  to  turn 
back  from  the  Gospel,  with  its  spiritual  order  and 
its  hopes  of  things  not  yet  seen,  to  the  outworn 
Dispensation,  with  its  externally  majestic  circum- 
stances of  glorious  ritual  and  imposing  shows  of 
polity  and  power.  They  would  need  again  and 
again  to  open  the  soul's  ears  and  eyes,  and  stead- 
fastly to  recollect,  against  all  appearances,  that  we 
"  arc  come  unto  the  Mount  Sion,"  if  they  were  to 
resist  the  magnetic  forces  which  drew  them  back 
towards  Sinai — and  towards  death.  So  they  were 
to  hear  the  sweet  voices  of  heavenly  love,  and 
festal  life,  and  blood-bought  covenanted  peace, 
sounding  from  the  true  Sion,  with  joy  indeed  but 
also  with  holy  dread.  They  were  to  fear  lest 
they  should  "decline"  them,  lest  sense  should 
conquer  faith  and  the  soul  be  lost  under  the 
mountain  of  condemnation    after    all.     "  For  if 


WARNING  AND  PROMISE         97 

they  did  not  escape  who  on  earth  declined  Him 
who  spoke  oraculous  warning  ('x^prjfiaTL^ovra), 
much  more  shall  we  not  escape,  turning  from 
Him  who  warns  from  heaven"  (ver.  25).  The 
contemner  of  the  ban  of  Sinai  fell  "  stricken 
through"  the  body.  The  "  decliner "  of  the 
admonition  to  turn  no  more  to  the  hill  of  doom, 
but  boldly  to  climb  the  hill  of  peace,  will  fall 
stricken  through  the  soul.  That  warning  voice, 
which  once  shook  the  desert,  has  now  promised 
(ver.  26) — for  a  promise,  the  promise  of  an 
eternal  redemption,  lies  deep  in  that  threatening 
(Hag.  ii.  6) — that  not  earth  only  but  heaven  is 
yet  to  feel  His  shaking,  and  once  for  ever  when 
it  comes.  He,  "  yet  once  more,"  shall  work  one 
vast  "  removing";  and  then  (ver.  27)  a  stability 
irremovable  shall  finally  come  in.  "  The  things 
that  have  been  made,"  the  terrestrial  and 
material  "figures  of  the  real"  (ix.  24),  are  to 
pass  away,  never  to  return,  in  order  that  "  the 
things  incapable  of  distui'bance  "  {to,  /xr)  aa\ev6- 
fxeva)  "  may  remain."  And  what  are  these 
things  ?  Nothing  less  than  the  spiritual,  ulti- 
mate, all-fulfilling  truths  and  glories  to  which  the 
"  things  made  "  served  as  preparation,  type,  and 
foil,  but  which  themselves  to  all  eternity  shall 
know  no  successors,  no  *'  new  order "  through 
which  God  shall  otherwise  "  fulfil  Himself."  For 
what  are  they,  in  their  inmost  essence  ?  They 
7 


98  SINAI  AND  SION 

are  the  truths  which  spring  always  from  the 
Incarnate  Son,  and  return  always  into  Him ; 
"  the  redemption  that  is  in  Christ  Jesus,  with 
eternal  glory." 

So  let  the  disciples  clasp  their  sublime 
privileges,  and  greatly  rejoice  —  and  also 
greatly  fear  to  "  decline "  them,  to  surrender 
them,  to  treat  them  lightly.  They  "  are  in 
receipt  {irapaXafi^dvovTesi)  of  a  kingdom  un- 
shakable," for  they  have  become  the  willing 
vassals  of  the  eternal  David  of  the  true  Israel,  in 
whose  kingship  they  too  are  kings,  reigning  over 
"  all  the  power  of  the  enemy."  But,  for  the 
very  reason  that  they  hold  a  royalty,  and  such  a 
royalty,  let  them  address  themselves  to  a  life  of 
adoration,  and  reverence,  and  awe,  deep  as  that 
of  the  holy  ones  who,  close  to  the  throne  above, 
veil  their  faces  and  their  feet  evermore  with 
their  wings,  not  in  terror  but  in  a  joy  full  of 
wonder  and  of  worship.  "  Let  us  have  grace," 
let  us  tahe  and  use  the  grace  which  in  the 
covenant  is  ours,*  and  in  it  let  us  live  this  life. 
For  it  is  to  be  a  life  all  the  while  not  of  alarm 
and  doubting,  but  of  grace.  Only  it  is  to  be 
lived  as  before  Him  who  is  (ver.  29)  "consuming 
fire,  a  jealous  God"  (Deut.  iv.  24),  "jealous" 
ag'ainst    all    "  forsakers    of    their    own    mercy " 

*  For  this  use  of  ^x'^Mc  compare  Rom.  v.  1,  where  the  best 
supported  reading  gives  ^x^^Mf  dp-qvr^v. 


TERROR  VEILING  LOVE  99 

(Jonali  ii.   8),  rejectors  of  His  Son,  even  when 
they  seem  to  fly  for  refuge  to  His  Law. 

Thus  the  great  concatenated  passage  concludes 
with  one  of  the  most  formidable  of  Scripture 
utterances.  But  let  us  boldly  gather  peace  and 
hope  even  from  this  word  of  fire.  For  what  is 
the  true  message  of  the  verses  we  have  traversed, 
when  we  look  back  and  sum  them  up  ?  It  is 
the  glory,  the  fulness,  the  living  richness,  the 
abundant  lovingkindness,  the  supreme  and 
absolute  finality,  of  the  Gospel  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ.  It  is  our  Lord  Himself,  the  perfect 
and  ultimate  revelation  of  the  grace  and  peace 
of  God.  And  the  fiery  jealousy  of  the  close, 
the  warning  that  we  shall  lose  our  souls  if  we 
"  decline  "  the  blessed  Son,  what  does  it  mean  as 
to  His  Father's  heart  ?  That  He  so  loves  the 
Son,  and  so  loves  us,  that  He  adjures  us  by  all 
His  terrors  as  well  as  all  His  mercies  never  to 
turn  for  refuge  for  one  hour  away  from  the 
all-perfect  Christ. 


CHAPTER  XII 
APPEALS   AND   INSTRUCTIONS 

Heb.  xiii.  1-14 

THE  last  chapter  of  the  Epistle  has  a  character 
quite  of  its  own.  Unlike  many  of  those 
often  arbitrary  divisions  of  the  New  Testament 
books  which  we  know  as  chapters,  it  is  a 
naturally  separate  section.  The  long  and 
sustained  arguments  are  over.  The  Writer's 
thoughts,  gravitating  to  a  close,  and  occupied 
naturally  as  they  do  so  with  the  personal  con- 
ditions of  his  Hebrew  brethren,  attach  them- 
selves now  to  one  now  to  another  side  of  their 
duties,  their  difficulties,  their  more  particular  and 
detailed  needs,  practical  and  spiritual.  As  he 
touches  upon  these,  sentence  by  sentence,  we 
often  see  at  a  glance  the  probable  occasion  of  the 
words,  but  often  again  we  are  left  in  the  dark 
about  it.  Who  shall  say  precisely  why  he 
insists  (ver.  2)  upon  the  exercise  of  hospitality  ? 
or  who  were  "the  prisoners"  (ver.  3)  whom  he 
bids  them  remember  ?     Who  shall  tell  what  in 


RULES  OF  LOVE  AND  PURITY  loi 

this  particular  commuuity  was  the  occasion  for  a 
solemn  emphasis  (ver.  4)  upon  the  holiness  of 
marriage,  or  why  again,  just  for  them,  it  was 
well  to  speak  in  warning  (ver.  5)  about  the  love 
of  money  and  the  temptation  to  discontent  ? 
Nor  can  we  be  certain  who  were  those  departed 
"leaders,"  "guides,"  of  ver.  7,  whose  "faith"  the 
disciples  were  to  "  imitate,"  whose  blessed  "  exit 
from  their  walk  of  life "  they  were  to  "  con- 
template." 

All  we  can  say  of  these  opening  topics  of 
the  chapter  is  that,  whatever  the  occasions  were, 
the  words  occasioned  are  for  us  inestimably 
precious.  Dear  to  the  heart  of  the  believing 
Church  for  ages  have  been  these  precepts  to  love 
the  brethren  ((f)i,\aBe\(f)La),  to  love  the  stranger 
{(piXo^evLa),  to  remember  Abraham  at  Mamre 
and  Gideon  at  Ophrah  with  their  angel-guests, 
and  to  see  a  possible  angel-visitor  in  every 
needing  stranger  at  the  door.  The  call  (ver.  2) 
to  remember  the  captive,  and  the  sufferer  of 
every  sort,  comes  with  solemn  power  from  this 
paragraph,  as  it  presses  home  the  law  of 
sympathetic  fellowship,  and  in  one  passing 
phrase  ("  as  being  in  the  body  ")  reminds  us  that, 
for  the  Christian,  all  sufferings,  all  burthens  of 
pain  and  care,  cease  for  ever  when  once  he  is 
"  out  of  the  body."  Sacred  is  the  witness  borne 
here  to  the  pure  dignity  of    wedlock  (ver.  4) : 


I02     APPEALS  AND   INSTRUCTIONS 

"  Be  *  marriage  honourable  in  all  things,  and  the 
bed  unspotted  ;  for  fornicators  and  adulterers  " — 
not  only  adulterers,  but  those  also  who  sin  that 
other  sin  which  the  world  so  easily  and  so 
blindly  condones — "  God  will  judge."  And  when 
the  Christian  is  warned  (ver.  5)  against  the 
greed  of  gain,  the  quoted  words  of  the  Old 
Testament  make,  by  the  use  they  are  put  to,  a 
possession  for  ever  valuable  to  the  believing  reader 
of  the  Scriptures.  For  not  only  are  they  in 
themselves  wonderful  in  their  emphasis  :  "  I  will 
never  give  thee  up ;  I  will  never,  never  desert 
thee."  They  are  inestimable  as  an  example  of 
the  sort  of  use  which  this  New  Testament  pro- 
phet could  make  of  the  spiritual  riches  of  the 
Old  Testament.  For  here  he  sees  a  Divine 
watchword  for  the  new  life,  not  only  in  the 
glorious  outburst  of  faith  (ver.  6)  in  Psalm  cxviii., 
the  Hallel  of  the  Passover.  In  the  words 
spoken  to  Joshua,  and  to  all  appearance  spoken 
to  him  pe7'sonally  and  alone  (ver.  5  :  see  Josh, 
i.  5),  we  are  led  equally  to  see  a  message  from 
the  heart  of  God  straight  to  every  Christian  soul. 
Seldom,  if  ever,  are  we  more  powerfully  and 
tenderly  encouraged  than  we  are  here  to  use 
with  confidence  that  old-fashioned  and  now  often 

*  The  sentence  demands  an  understood  imperative  verb,  with- 
out which  the  "for  "  which  (in  the  true  reading)  introduces 
the  second  clause  is  out  of  place. 


DEPARTED  GUIDES  103 

disparaged  sort  of  Bible  study,  the  collection 
of  eternal  and  universal  principles  of  spiritual 
life  out  of  an  "  isolated  text." 

Then  comes  the  passage  where  the  departed 
"  guides "  are  commemorated.  Whoever  they 
were,  were  they  a  Stephen  and  a  James,  or 
saints  utterly  unknown  to  us,  that  passage  is 
precious  in  its  principles,  true  for  all  time,  of 
remembrance  and  appeal.  It  consecrates  the 
fidelity  of  the  Christian  memory.  It  assures  us 
that  to  cheorish  the  names,  the  words,  the  con- 
duct, the  holy  lives,  the  blessed  deaths,  of  our 
teachers  of  days  long  done  is  no  mere  indulgence 
of  unfruitful  sentiment.  It  is  natural  to  the 
Gospel,  which,  just  because  it  is  the  message 
of  an  unspeakably  happy  future,  also  sanctifies 
the  past  which  is  the  living  antecedent  to  it. 
Just  because  we  look  with  the  love  of  hope  towards 
"  our  gathering  together  unto  Him,"  we  are  to 
turn  with  the  love  of  memory  towards  all  the 
gifts  of  God  given  to  us  through  the  holy  ones 
with  whom  we  look  to  be  "  gathered  together." 
"The  exit  of  their  walk  of  life"  (ver.  7)  is  to 
be  our  study,  our  meditation.  We  are  to  "  look 
it  up  and  down  "  (dvaOewpovvTe^)  as  we  would 
some  great  monument  of  victory,  and  from  that 
contemplation  we  are  to  go  back  into  life,  to 
"  imitate  their  faith,"  to  do  just  what  they  did, 
treating  (xi.  1)  the  unseen  as  visible,  the  hoped- 


I04     APPEALS  AND   INSTRUCTIONS 

for  as  present  and  within  our  embrace.  Thank 
God  for  this  authorization  and  hallowing  of  our 
recollections.  Precious  indeed  is  its  assurance  that 
the  sweetness  of  them  (for  all  its  ineffable  element 
of  sadness,  as  eyes  and  ears  are  hungry  for  the 
faces  and  the  voices  gone,  for  the  look  and  tone 
of  the  preacher,  the  teacher,  through  whom  we 
first  knew  the  Lord,  or  knew  Him  better)  is  no 
half-forbidden  luxury  of  the  soul  but  a  means 
of  victorious  grace. 

But  now  comes  in  a  passage  of  the  chapter 
which  more  obviously  tells  its  own  story  of 
occasion  and  aim.  The  Writer  recurs  to  the 
supreme  theme  of  the  Epistle,  the  antithesis 
between  the  Lord  Jesus,  with  His  finished  work 
and  absolute  permanence,  and  the  transitory 
antecedents  of  the  older  dispensation.  Once 
more  the  Hebrews  are  to  remember  His  eternity. 
His  eternal  personal  identity,  unbeginning  and 
without  end  (ver.  8) ;  He  is  "  the  same,  yester- 
day, and  to-day,  and  unto  the  ages."  Before 
all  types  and  preparations,  before  law,  and  ritual, 
and  prophecy,  He  is.  When,  having  done  their 
long  work,  they  cease,  He  still  is.  Over  the 
glory  of  His  being  and  character  passes  no 
"  shadow  of  turning."  Never  to  the  endless 
ages  shall  He  need  to  be  other  than  He  is, 
or  to  be  succeeded  by  a  greater.  "  Jesus, 
Messiah  " ;  He    is    Alpha ;  He    is    also  Omega. 


ALPHA  AND  OMEGA  105 

The  whole  alphabet  of  revelation  between  the 
first  letter  and  the  last  does  but  spell  out  the 
golden  legend  of  His  unalterable  glory. 

In  contrast  to  Him,  thus  unchangeably  Him- 
self, place  the  "  teachings  variegated  and  alien  " 
(ver.  9)  which  would  draw  you  from  beside  Him 
(7rapa(f)ep€a6e)  back  to  an  outworn  ceremonial 
distorted  from  its  true  purpose.  "  Looking  unto 
Jesus,"  stay  still  and  be  at  rest  in  Him.  The  ritual 
law  of  "  food "  (^pcofiara)  had  its  perfectly  be- 
fitting place  in  the  age  of  elementary  preparation. 
But  to  make  it  now  a  rival  to  the  message  of 
that  "  grace  "  which  means  a  life  lived  by  faith 
in  the  Son  of  God,  is  to  defraud  "  the  heart "  of 
that  which  alone  can  "  establish "  it  in  peace, 
holiness,  and  hope.  To  walk  in  Him  is  to  go 
from  strength  to  strength.  To  "  walk  in 
them "  (ol  irepLTTarovvTes:)  is  to  miss  the  very 
"  benefit "  you  seek.  It  is  to  move  away  from 
the  light,  backward,  into  spiritual  death. 

Here  follows  in  close  sequence  a  passage  of 
pregnant  significance.  It  begins  with  ver.  10, 
and  the  connexion  is  not  finally  broken  till 
ver.  16.  The  Writer,  prompted  perhaps  by 
the  allusion  to  a  ceremonial  law  of  "  meats," 
turns  abruptly  to  the  still  existing  ritual  of 
the  Law,  familiar  to  his  Hebrew  readers  as  to 
himself.  From  it  he  leads  their  thoughts  once 
more     to    the    profound     import     and    ultimate 


io6     APPEALS  AND   INSTRUCTIONS 

efficacy  of  the  supreme  atoning  Sacrifice,  in  all 
its  shame  and  all  its  glory,  and  to  the  call  which 
that  great  fact  conveys  to  the  believer  to  break 
for  ever,  at  whatever  cost,  from  the  old  order, 
considered  as  a  rival  to  the  Cross.  Such  is  the 
true  bearing  of  this  often  debated  passage,  if 
I  am  not  greatly  mistaken.  The  "  altar " 
which  "we  have"  (ver.  10)  is  not,  if  I  read 
the  argumentative  context  rightly,  either  the 
atoning  Cross,  at  least  as  to  any  direct  reference 
of  'the  word,  or  the  Table  of  the  Christian 
Eucharist.  As  to  this  latter  conjecture  indeed 
the  reference  is  totally  unsupported  by  any 
really  primeval  parallel.''^  And  in  this  Upistle 
it  is  scarcely  conceivable  that,  if  that  were  the 
meaning,  if  we  were  to  be  abruptly  informed 
here  that  we  Christians  have  in  the  Holy  Table 
a  sacrificial  altar,  no  allusion,  however  slight, 
should  intimate  that  the  Christian  minister  is 
not  a  "  leader "  only  but  a  sacrificing  priest. 
The  whole  Epistle  may  be  said  to  circle  round 
the  great  topic  of  Priesthood.  Erom  various 
points  of  view,  and  with  purposes  as  practical 
as  possible  in  regard  of  faith,  hope,  and  life, 
that    topic   has  been    handled.     But    is    it    too 

*  Lightfoot  (on  Ign.  ad  Eph.  v.,  et  alibi)  has  clearly  shewn 
that  Ignatius'  use  of  dv<Tt.a(jTi]piov  is  altogether  mystical. 
He  means  not  the  Holy  Table  but  (among  other  references) 
the  Clmrch  of  Christ  as  the  sjihere  or  jilace  of  spiritual 
sacrifice. 


WE   HAVE  AN   ALTAR  107 

much  to  say  that,  for  the  Writer,  the  one 
Christian  priesthood  which  is  analogous  to  the 
Levitical  priesthood,  as  a  sacrificial  and  media- 
torial function  on  behalf  of  the  Church,  is  the 
High  Priesthood  of  the  Son  of  God?  The 
Christian  Ministry  indeed  hardly,  if  at  all, 
comes  into  view  throughout  the  argument.  We 
find  it  at  length  in  this  chapter,  the  chapter 
which  tells  the  readers  that  they  "have  an 
altar."  Twice  over  the  pastors  of  the  Church 
are  mentioned  here  (verses  7,  17);  but  how? 
As  "  leaders,"  "  guides,"  rjyovfievoL :  as  those 
who  "  speak  the  word  of  God,"  as  those  whose 
vigilance  over  the  souls  of  the  flock  claims  a 
loving  and  grateful  loyalty.  That  is  to  say, 
the  Christian  Ministry  is  above  all  things  a 
pastorate.  To  a  sacerdotal  aspect  of  its  special 
functions  no  reference  appears.  And  that  is 
noteworthy  just  because  of  the  profound  sacer- 
dotahsm  of  the  whole  context  of  the  Epistle. 

On  a  careful  review  of  the  words  before  us 
(verses  10-16),  we  are  justified  iu  the  conclu- 
sion that  the  reference  is,  not  to  a  Christian 
institution  at  all  but  precisely  to  the  Hebrew 
ritual,  in  which  Writer  and  readers  still  had  part 
as  members  of  the  nation.  The  thing  in  view  is 
an  altar  whose  law  was  such  that  the  sacerdotal 
"  ministers  (ot  \arpevovTe<i)  of  the  Tabernacle " 
might  not  use  its  sacrifices  for  food.     But  why  ? 


io8     APPEALS  AND   INSTRUCTIONS 

Not  of  course  because  they  were  not  Christians, 
but  because  the  sacrifices  in  question  presented 
there  were  to  be  wholly  "burned,"  "  burned  without 
the  camp."  The  entire  thought  moves  within 
the  limits  of  the  typical  ceremonial.  It  deals 
with  the  holocaust  which  even  the  sacrificer 
might  handle  only  to  commit  it  to  the  fire ; 
the  victim  whose  destiny  was  to  be — not  eaten 
by  the  priestly  family  but  carried  outside  the 
camp  as  wholly  devoted  for  the  people's  sins. 

It  is  possible,  within  the  lines  of  the  Levitical 
ritual,  to  interpret  in  more  ways  than  one  the 
"  altar  "  in  question.  It  may  be  the  great  altar, 
regarded  in  its  special  use  on  the  Atonement 
Day  (Lev.  xvi.) ;  not  another  structure  than 
that  used  for  other  sacrifices,  but  that  same 
altar  regarded,  for  the  moment,  as  if  separated 
and  alone,  because  of  the  awful  speciality  of  the 
stern  while  merciful  ritual  of  that  great  day. 
Or  again,  as  it  has  been  argued  with  learning 
and  force,"^  the  reference  may  be  to  the  altar  of 
incense,  the  golden  altar  of  the  Holiest,  on  which 
the  blood  not  only  of  the  atonement  victims  but 
of  all  sin-offerings  was  sprinkled ;  and  every 
sacrifice  so  treated  was  regarded  as  a  holocaust ; 
no  part  of  it  was  reserved  for  food.  But  in 
either  case  the   altar  in   question   is  not  of   the 

*  By  the  Rev.  James  Burkitt,  in  The  Oolden  Altar :  an  Ex- 
position of  Hebrews  xiii.  10,  11. 


WITHOUT  THE  CAMP  109 

Church  but  of  the  Tabernacle.  The  "we"  of 
ver.  10  is  the  community  in  its  Hebrew  rather 
than  in  its  Christian  character. 

So  the  whole  thought  centres  itself  in  the 
supreme  Sacrifice,  as  Antitype  answering  to  type. 
Jesus  is  our  holocaust,  wholly  sacrificed  for  our 
sins.  His  sacrifice  involved  in  its  awful  ritual 
the  shame  and  agony  of  rejection  by  His  own, 
excommunication  from  "  the  camp  "  of  the  chosen. 
Then  let  the  Hebrew  believer,  "receiving  that 
inestimable  benefit,"  be  ready  also  to  follow  his 
Eedeemer's  steps  in  rejection  and  in  shame.  Let 
him  also  be  prepared  for  casting  out  by  priest 
and  scribe.  Let  his  yearning  heart,  with  what- 
ever anguish,  inure  itself  to  the  thought  that 
the  beloved  "  city  of  his  solemnities  "  is  not  the 
final  and  enduring  Jerusalem.  Let  his  "  thoughts 
to  heaven  the  steadier  rise,"  as  he  looks,  like 
Abraham  before  him,  to  "God's  great  town  in 
the  unknown  land,"  where  sits  on  high  the 
Mediator  of  the  New  Covenant,  the  "  Priest 
upon  His  throne." 


CHAPTER  XIII 
LAST   WORDS 

Hee.  xiii.  15-25 

THE  connexion  of  ver.  15  with  the  antecedent 
context  is  suggestive.  We  have  been  led 
to  a  contemplation  of  the  Lord  Jesus  in  His 
character  as  Antitype  and  Fulfilment  of  the 
holocaust  of  the  Levitical  atonement.  Even  as 
the  chief  animal  victim  of  the  old  covenant, 
the  symbolical  bearer  of  the  sins  of  Israel,  was 
carried  "  outside  the  camp "  to  be  consumed,  so 
our  Victim  was  led  "  outside  the  gate  "  of  the  city 
to  His  death,  that  there,  by  His  blood-shedding, 
by  His  absolute  and  perfect  self-immolation  in 
our  stead,  He  might  "  hallow  His  people,"  bringing 
them  forgiven  and  welcomed  back  to  God.  The 
point  of  the  dread  ritual  of  Calvary  here  specially 
emphasized  is  just  this,  that  He  "  suffered  outside 
the  gate."  The  old  Israel,  guiltily  unknowing, 
fulfilled  the  type  in  the  Antitype  by  refusing 
Him  place  even  to  die  within  the  sacred  city. 
He,  in   His   love   for    the   new  Israel,  that   He 


GO  FORTH  UNTO   HIM  in 

might  in  every  particular  be  and  do  what  was 
foreshadowed  for  Him,  refused  not  to  submit  to 
that  supreme  rejection. 

From  this  the  apostolic  Writer  draws  two 
messages  for  his  readers.  First  (ver.  13)  they 
are  to  follow  the  Lord  outside,  willing  to  be 
rejected  like  Him  and  because  of  Him,  They 
are  to  be  patient,  for  His  sake,  when  they  are 
"  put  out  of  the  synagogues "  and  reproached 
as  traitors  to  Moses.  They  are  by  faith  to 
conquer  the  cry  of  their  human  hearts  as  they 
crave  perpetuity  for  the  beloved  past ;  they  are 
to  remember  (ver.  14),  as  they  issue  from  the 
old  covenant's  gate  into  what  seems  the  wild, 
that  "  Jerusalem  that  now  is  "  was  built  for  time 
only,  and  that  they  belong  to  the  city  of  eternity, 
where  their  High  Priest  sits  on  His  throne  to 
bless  them  now  and  welcome  them  hereafter. 
Then,  secondly  and  therefore  (ver.  15),  they 
are  to  use  Him  now  and  for  ever  as  their  one 
sacerdotal  Mediator.  By  Him,  not  by  the 
Aaronic  ministry,  they  are  to  bring  their  sacri- 
fices to  God.  They  are  to  accept  exclusion 
and  to  turn  it  into  inclusion,  into  a  shutting-up 
of  all  their  hopes  and  all  their  worship  into 
their  glorious  Christ.  And  what  now  is  their 
altar-ritual  to  be  ?  It  is  to  be  twofold ;  the 
offering  of  praise,  "  the  fruit  of  lips  that  confess  " 
the  glory  of  "  His  Name,"  aud  then  the  sacrifice 


112  LAST  WORDS 

of  self  and  its  possessions  for  others  for  His  sake 
(ver.  16);  "doing  good,  and  communicating" 
blessings ;  for  these  are  "  altar-sacrifices  {Ova-iat) 
with  which  God  is  well  pleased." 

Such,  if  we  are  right,  is  the  connexion.  The 
Lord,  rejected,  that  He  might  die  for  us  after  a 
manner  faithful  to  the  prophetic  type,  is  to  be 
the  Hebrew  disciple's  example  of  patience  when 
he  too  is  rejected.  Such  rejection  is  only  to 
unite  him  the  more  closely  to  the  Christ  as 
his  way  to  God,  his  Mediator  for  all  the  praise 
and  all  the  unselfish  service  which  is  to  fill 
his  dedicated  life. 

The  lesson  was  special  for  the  believing 
Hebrew  then.  But  it  has  its  meaning  for  all 
time.  In  one  way  or  another  the  true  follower 
of  the  crucified  and  rejected  Eedeemer  must 
stand  ready  for  cross  and  for  exclusion,  so  far 
as  he  is  called  upon  by  his  faith  to  break  with 
all  ultimate  and  absolute  allegiance  save  to 
"  Jesus  Christ  and  Him  crucified."  He  has  to 
recollect,  on  one  account  or  another,  that  he 
too  belongs  to  the  invisible  order,  to  the  "citi- 
zenship that  is  in  heaven,"  and  not  to  any  visible 
polity  as  if  it  were  final,  as  if  it  were  his  spirit's 
goal.  But  then  he  too  is  to  make  this  detach- 
ment and  separation  only  a  fresh  means  to  unite 
him  to  his  great  High  Priest  for  a  self-sacrificial 
life  in  Him.     He  is  to  be  no  frowning  sectary, 


THE  CHRISTIAN   MINISTRY      113 

saying,  "  I  am  holier  than  thou."  He  is  to  be 
simply  a  Christian,  to  whom,  whatever  the  world 
may  say,  or  the  world-element  in  the  Church, 
Christ  the  crucified  is  Lord  indeed. 

Following  these  appeals,  in  a  connexion  which 
we  can  trace,  the  thought  passes  (ver.  17)  to  the 
Christian  Ministry.  "  Outside  the  gate  "  of  the 
old  order,  the  disciple  finds  himself  at  once  not 
an  isolated  unit  but  included  in  a  netv  order.  He  is 
one  of  a  spiritual  community,  which  has  of  course 
its  system,  for  it  has  to  cohere  and  to  operate. 
It  has  amidst  it  its  "  leaders,"  its  r]r^ov^evoi,  its 
pastoral  guides  and  watchmen,  a  recognized 
institution,  which  always  as  such  (though  always 
the  more  as  it  is  more  true  to  its  ideal)  claims 
the  obedience,  the  loyalty,  the  subordination,  of 
the  multitude  who  are  not  "  leaders."  These 
"  leaders  "  are  set  before  us  as  bearing  a  Divine 
commission,  for  we  read  that  they  "  must  give 
account."  So  qualified,  not  as  assertors  of  them- 
selves but  as  servants  and  agents  of  God,  they 
watch  for  souls,  with  a  vigilance  loving  and 
tender,  asking  for  response. 

Such  an  ideal  of  the  Christian  Ministry  is  as 
remote  as  possible  from  that  of  a  sacerdotal  caste, 
or  indeed  of  anything  that  has  to  do  with  a  harsh 
and  perfunctory  oificialism.  Its  position  is  totally 
different  from  that  of  an  agency  of  mediation 
between  man  and  God,  between  the  Church  and 
8 


114  LAST  WORDS 

her  Lord.     We  have  one  passing  note  of  this  in 
the  fact,  present  in  other  Epistles  as  in  this,  that 
the  Ministry  is  addressed  and  greeted  through 
the  Church  rather  than  the  Church  through  the 
Ministry.     See    below,   ver.   24 :    "  Salute    your 
leaders."      If  we  may  put  it   so,  the    Christian 
clergy  are  so  far  from  being  the  sole  deliverers  of 
the  apostolic  writings  to  the  people  that  the  people 
rather  have  to  deliver  such  messages  to  the  clergy. 
Yet  on  the  other  hand  this  passage  is  one  of 
the  many  which  set  the  Christian  Ministry  before 
us  as  a  vital  factor  in  the  life  of  the  Church,  an 
institution  which   has   its   life   from   above,  not 
from  the  will  of  the  community  but  from  the 
gift  of  God.      In  their  anxiety  to  avoid  distor- 
tions and  exaggerations  of  the  ministerial  idea 
many  Christians  have  failed    to    give   adeq[uate 
place  in  thought  to  its  essentially  Divine  origin 
and    commission.     A   passage   like    this    should 
correct  such  a  reaction.     There  is  in  the  Church, 
by  the  will  of  God,  a  "  leadership,"  recognizable, 
authentic,  not    arbitrary   yet    authoritative,  not 
mediatorial  yet  pastoral.     It  is  never  designed 
indeed  to  come  really  between  the  believing  soul 
and  the  ever-present  Lord.     Yet  it  is  appointed 
as  the  normal  human  agency  by  which  He  works 
for  the  soul,  not  only  in  the  solemn  ministra- 
tion of  His  great  ordinances  of  blessing  but  in 
spiritual    assistance    and   guidance  as  well.     It 


PASTORAL  AUTHORITY         115 

will  be  the  pastor's  folly  if  he  so  insists  upon 
the  imagery  of  shepherding  as  to  forget  for  one 
moment  that  the  "  sheep "  are  also,  and  in  a 
larger  aspect,  his  equal  brethren  and  sisters, 
"  the  sons  and  daughters  of  the  Lord  Almighty." 
It  will  be  his  folly,  and  the  ruin  of  his  true 
authority,  if  he  forgets  in  any  part  of  his  service 
that  he  is  not  the  master  but  the  servant  of  the 
Church.  If  in  his  "  guidance "  he  dares  to 
domineer,  and  if  in  his  teaching  he  takes  the 
tone  of  one  who  can  dictate  any  point  of  faith 
or  duty,  on  his  own  authority,  apart  from  the 
Word  of  God,  he  is  fatally  mistaking  his  whole 
function.  Nevertheless  he  is  called  to  be  a 
"  leader,"  with  the  responsibilities  and  duties 
of  a  leader.  This  thought  is  to  keep  him  always 
humble,  and  always  intently  on  the  watch 
over  his  own  life.  But  it  is  to  be  present 
also  to  the  members  of  the  Church,  to  remind 
them  always  to  tend  towards  that  generous 
"  obedience  "  with  which  Christian  freedom  safe- 
guards Christian  order.  The  Church  is  never  to 
forget  the  responsibility  of  the  Ministry ;  it  is  to 
assist  the  Ministry  in  its  true  discharge.  For  in 
this  also  "  we  are  members  one  of  another." 

The  closing  sentences  of  the  great  Letter 
(ver.  18  and  onwards)  call  for  little  detailed 
explanation,    with    one    great    exception.       The 


ii6  LAST  WORDS 

Writer  asks  for  intercessory  prayer  for  himself 
and  his  colleagues,  in  the  accent  of  one  who 
knows  his  own  unreserved  desire  (ver.  18)  to 
keep  his  whole  "  life-walk  honourable,"  Ka\(a<; 
avaarpe^eadai.  He  asks  specially  for  this  help, 
with  a  view  to  his  own  speedier  return  to  his 
disciples  (ver.  19),  an  allusion  which  we  cannot 
now  explain  for  certain.  At  the  very  end 
(verses  22-25),  with  a  noble  modesty,  in  the 
tone  of  the  true  Christian  leader,  drawing,  not 
driving,  he  asks  for  "  patience  "  over  his  "  appeal  " 
(7rapdK\r)(Ti<;),  his  solemn  call  for  loyalty  to  the 
Christ  of  God  under  all  the  trials  of  the  time. 

He  has  "  used  brevity "  (Bia  ^pa^eoiv)  in 
writing  ;  he  might  have  expanded  the  vast  theme 
indefinitely ;  he  has  only  given  them  its  essen- 
tials. Then  he  makes  his  one  personal  refer- 
ence, abruptly,  as  if  speaking  about  well-known 
circumstances;  Timotheus  (ver.  23)  has  been 
released  from  prison,  and  is  on  his  way  to  join 
the  Writer,  and  the  two  may  hope  to  visit  the 
Hebrews  together  again.  Then  follows  the 
greeting  to  the  pastors  through  the  Cliurch  ;  and 
then  a  message  of  love  sent  by  "  those  from  Italy," 
that  is  to  say,  as  the  familiar  idiom  suggests, 
brethren  resident  in  Italy  who  send  their 
greeting  from  it ;  an  allusion  over  which  endless 
conjectures  may  gather  but  which  must  always 
remain  uncertain.     The  last  word  is  the  blessing 


BENEDICTION  117 

of  grace.  "  Grace " — the  holy  effect  upon  the 
Church,  and  upon  the  saint,  of  "  God  for  us " 
and  "  God  in  us  " — "  be  with  you  all." 

We  have  thus  followed  this  final  passage  to 
its  end,  but  making,  as  the  reader  will  have 
seen,  'one  great  omission.  The  twentieth  and 
twenty-first  verses  stand  by  themselves,  with 
such  an  elevation  of  their  own,  with  such  a 
tranquil  majesty  of  diction,  with  such  a  pregnant 
depth  of  import,  that  I  could  not  but  reserve 
my  brief  comment  on  them  to  the  very  last  in 
these  attempts  to  carry  "  Messages  from  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews." 

"  Now  the  God  of  peace,  who  hath  brought 
again  from  the  dead  the  Shepherd  of  the  sheep, 
that  great  Shepherd,  with  blood  of  covenant 
eternal,  even  our  Lord  Jesus — may  He  perfect 
you  in  all  good  unto  the  doing  of  His  will,  doing 
in  you  that  which  is  acceptable  before  Him,  by 
means  of  Jesus  Christ ;  to  whom  be  the  glory 
to  the  ages  of  the  ages.     Amen." 

Here  is  one  of  the  greatest,  if  uot  the  greatest, 
of  the  benedictory  prayers  of  the  Bible.  At 
every  turn  it  sets  before  us  truths  of  the  first 
order,  woven  into  one  wonderful  texture.  It 
presents  to  us  our  God  as  "  the  God  of  peace," 
the  God  who  has  welcomed  us  to  reconciliation 
and  is  now  and  for   ever  reconciled ;    at  peace 


H8  LAST  WORDS 

with  us  and  we  with  Him.  It  sets  full  in  view 
the  supreme  fact  upon  which  that  certainty 
reposes,  the  Eesurrection  of  His  Christ,  recorded 
here  and  only  here  in  the  long  Epistle,  as  the 
act  and  deed  by  which  the  Father  sealed  before 
the  universe  His  acceptance  of  the  Son  for  us. 
It  connects  that  Resurrection  with  its  mighty 
antecedent,  the  atoning  Death,  in  words  preg- 
nant with  the  truths  characteristic  of  the  Epistle  ; 
the  Lord,  the  great  Shepherd,  was  "  brought 
again  from  the  dead  "  (the  phrase  is  reminiscent 
of  Isa.  Ixiii.  11,  with  its  memories  of  Moses 
and  the  ascent  of  Israel  from  the  parted  waters), 
"  in  the  blood "  (as  it  were  attended,  authen- 
ticated, entitled,  by  the  blood)  "  of  covenant 
eternal,"  that  supreme  Compact  of  Divine  love  of 
which  twice  over  (chapters  viii.,  x.)  the  Epistle 
has  spoken  ;  under  which,  for  the  slain  Mediator's 
sake,  God  both  forgives  iniquity  and  transfigures 
the  will  of  the  forgiven.  Then  the  prayer 
follows  upon  these  mighty  premisses.  The 
Teacher  asks,  with  the  authority  of  an  inspired 
benediction,  that  this  God  of  peace,  of  covenant, 
of  the  crucified  and  risen  Lord  Jesus,  would 
carry  out  the  covenant-promise  in  His  new  Israel 
to  the  full.  May  He  "perfect"  them,  that  is 
to  say,  equip  them  on  every  side  with  every 
requisite  of  grace,  for  the  supreme  purpose  of 
their  existence,  the  doing  of  His  will  in  everything. 


THE  SHEPHERD  OF  THE  SHEEP     119 

May  He  so  inhabit  and  inform  them,  through 
His  Son,  by  His  Spirit,  that  He  shall  be  the 
will  within  their  will,  the  force  beneath  their 
weakness,  "  working  in  them  to  will  and  to  do 
for  His  good  pleasure's  sake"  (Phil.  ii.  13).  To 
Him,  the  Father,  be  glory  for  ever.  To  Him, 
the  Son,  be  glory  for  ever.  Who  shall  decide, 
and  who  need  decide,  to  which  Divine  Person 
the  relative  pronoun  a>  precisely  attaches  ? 
The  glory  is  to  the  Father  in  the  Son,  to  the 
Son  in  the  Father. 

One  closing  word  remains.  Observe  this 
designation  just  here  applied  to  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ;  "the  Shepherd,  the  great  Shepherd,  of 
the  sheep."  It  is  noteworthy,  because  in  our 
Epistle  it  stands  here  quite  alone.  We  have 
had  the  Christ  of  God  presented  to  us  through- 
out under  the  totally  different  character  of  the 
High  Priest,  the  great  Self-Immolator  of  the 
Cross,  now  exalted  in  the  glory  of  His  High 
Priesthood  to  be  the  Giver  of  blessing  from  the 
Throne.  To  Him  in  that  sublime  aspect  the 
thought  of  the  Hebrew  believer,  so  sorely  tempted 
to  look  away  from  Him,  to  look  backward  to 
the  old  and  ended  order,  has  been  steadily 
directed,  for  spiritual  rest  of  conscience  and  for 
loyalty  of  will.  But  here,  true  to  that  haUt 
of  the  Bible,  if  the  word  may  be  used,  with 
which  it  accumulates  on  Him  the  most  diverse 


I20  LAST  WORDS 

titles  iu  the  effort  to  set  forth  His  fulness,  the 
Writer  exchanges  all  this  range  of  thought  for 
the  one  endearing  designation  of  the  Shepherd 
of  the  sheep.  It  was  as  such  that  He  went 
down  to  death,  giving  for  the  flock  His  life.  It 
was  as  such  that  He  is  "  brought  again,"  to 
rescue,  to  watch,  to  feed,  to  guide  His  beloved 
charge,  "  in  the  power  of  life  indissoluble." 

Not  without  purpose  surely  was  the  Lord  left 
pictured  thus  in  the  view  of  His  tried  and 
tempted  followers.  In  the  region  of  conviction 
and  contemplation  He  was  to  shine  always 
before  them  as  the  High  Priest  upon  His  throne, 
the  more  than  fulfilment  of  every  type  and 
shadow,  the  goal  of  Prophecy,  "  the  end  of  the 
Law."  But  He  was  to  be  all  this  as  being  also, 
close  beside  them,  their  Shepherd,  great  and 
good.  He  was  to  be  with  them  in  the  pasture, 
and  in  the  desert,  and  in  the  valley  of  the  shadow 
of  death.  They  had  followed  Him  indeed  as 
their  Sacrifice  without  the  gate.  But  precisely 
there  He  took  to  Himself  His  resurrection-life, 
to  be  their  Companion  and  their  Watcher  for 
evermore.  The  Lord  was  their  Shepherd,  and 
He  is  ours ;  they  should  not,  and  we  shall  not, 
want. 


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